Fly Me to the Moon

It all started with an object: a 3D-printed moon, lit from within, with paper butterflies glued to its surface. They are Painted Lady butterflies, Vanessa cardui, the same butterflies that have traversed Catania's entire body of work for years. Migratory, accustomed to distances that should not concern them. From that first sculpture, a photograph was born, and from the photograph, this series of prints. The image was broken down and vectorized into three elements — background, moon, butterflies — until it was reduced to flat color fields, openly acknowledging its debt to screen printing and the pop imagery that made it a language. Each print is assigned a combination of three colors that is never repeated. The combinations are governed by a system that keeps the colors perceptually distant from each other: no pair can be confused, even from afar. Then the machine stops, and the hand begins. The fourth color is an oil pastel applied directly to the printed sheet: the outline of the moon, the stars, and a handwritten phrase — a thought that exists only with that image and would not work the same way on any other. This is why each sheet is a unique piece. Not a numbered edition: a single print, for each combination and for each phrase. Every day Catania publishes a new one on their channels, under the label Moon of the Day. The sculptural lamps from which it all began will be presented in autumn 2026.