PAUL DE HAAN

What sense does it make, in the twenty-first century, to practice exact representation, the banal and ordinary reproduction of reality? The answer is that, once again, there is an additional meaning behind what appears. It is above all in the invisible that the sublime reveals itself. The hyperrealist requires himself to analyze the truth with such precision and fidelity as to transfigure it, to make it truer than the truth even in its most complex 'optical deceptions'. 
And therefore once again in an unrealistic way: it is the triumph of the paradox: the obsessive reproduction of reality which, in practice, surpasses and distorts it.

The Roman artist Stefano Agostini
He has always been passionate about the classic way of drawing and painting. He signs his works with the Dutch art name "Paul De Haan", like a new contemporary Flemish. The study of the subject-object is total, every piece of the material is researched in all its peculiar forms and reflections.

He takes up the lessons of the great masters of the past, but with an absolute and personal iconic literature. Beyond what can be admired in his works there is certainly a "secret soul" that embodies every sensation of  world.

The artist's attentive and curious eye records the intimacy of light which in stereopsis condenses into universal poetry. The Roman author's pleasure in painting dialogues from Jan Van Eyck and Robert Campin, Caravaggio, Baschenis, Ceruti, up to the artists today like the Dutch Tjalf Sparnaay.

All that can be said when looking at these precious masterpieces is "Stefanus Agostini fuit hic".

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Danilo Giusino (Art Expert)