A X E L   D O Y E L   S T U D I O

Eyes of a Frightened Monkey is an NFT collection composed of a select number of works. Indeed, very little remains when we feel that abundance and plenty proved of no help.

The great jungle, the vast plains, the towering mountains, and the endless sky are reduced to what the pupils manage to reflect: what remains of the green, fractured by the silhouette of the hunter facing his prey. That is the terrified gaze of thousands of monkeys before their hunter.

Africa, so far from God and so close to the trigger-ready finger, hushed by the sounds of the frightened wilderness, yet perpetually in the sights of those who perhaps truly recognize its worth. And at the same time, so far removed from those who speak of it merely as a beautiful passage in a book describing the splendor of its green grasslands.

In this NFT collection, I continue to develop the poetics of environmental defense that defines my work. It is within it that I find the way to reaffirm the finest human values or, at the very least, to express what they ought to be.

In The Frightened Gaze of the Monkey, I place the gaze as the focal point of the collection, inviting us, as viewers, to reflect on those gazes we do not see, yet which are responsible for the final outcome. In doing so, I give center stage to the victim and their defenseless position.

As I have explained in previous texts, I am interested in exploring digital art by allowing the marks and traces inherent to the machine's process during the creation of a digital work to express themselves.

I am not interested in seeking excessive sharpness or definition, nor the high contrasts this new language offers. I prefer to honor the pure sensation conveyed by the initial version of the work at the moment of its conception.

There is a thin, invisible line that separates the seduction of color—resulting from technically correct retouching—from that color which makes us forget the "machine" and simply places the message of the work before our eyes.

In the same way, in the works of the Expressionists, the Fauves, and other artistic movements and styles, technique was subordinated to the idea and to what the artist wished to express from a more intimate perspective, far removed from the superficial or the merely retinal.