Reminiscenza ambiana   

Leggi ‘Reminiscenza ambiana’ per intero

(…) I dipinti di Ambo svelano sorprendenti antinomie e ambiguità mettendo l’osservatore di fronte a una serie di misteriosi paradossi e di dualismi radicali e assoluti. La sua arte è espressa secondo diversi paradigmi pittorici ed è articolata su più piani a seconda del soggetto ed in funzione di esso, egli l’affronta utilizzando soluzioni in prestito da disparati contesti storici dell’arte, producendo un linguaggio autentico ed inimitabile.
Ambo scava incessantemente nelle tradizioni artistiche, nelle tecniche del passato e nelle convenzioni di rappresentazione con esiti, come giustamente ha affermato José Van Roy Dalì: ‘eccelsi’; ciò vale per molti dei suoi lavori. (…)
Mantenendosi ben ancorato alla tradizione ed alla realtà egli approda a nuovi originalissimi risultati pittorici. Le sue ispirazioni sono molteplici, mentre alternativo ed eclettico è il suo modo di dipingere, di fare arte e quindi di vivere. Le sue fonti creative, con ampio uso di citazioni, possono derivare da diversi generi storici e dai più disparati temi iconografici passati e moderni. Egli, anche in virtù di non utilizzare un metodo che sia sempre lo stesso, fatto da lui stesso confermato, e che guardandolo lavorare nel suo studio ho potuto rilevare, riesce in conclusione a filtrare tutto attraverso la propria onnipervadente sensibilità. Ciò che Ambo prende viene adattato ai suoi scopi, trasferito dentro un nuovo sistema che va ad integrare, senza entrare in conflitto o opporsi, i sistemi dei suoi grandi predecessori. Tale autocoscienza artistica, anelando la liberazione dai lacci dell’aridità contemporanea, in un percorso eterogeneo utilizzante più simboli culturali, talvolta espliciti nei titoli e nei richiami figurativi, corre parallela alla vicenda biografica, tanto cruciale quanto enigmatica ed impenetrabile ai più. (…)
Espressione autentica di un occidentale del nostro tempo, il lavoro di Ambo riflette il turbamento lancinante di chiunque viva in questo terribile periodo e lo guardi lucidamente: un tempo cosparso e lievemente ricoperto di meraviglia. La sua tenacia ed onestà, profonde e cristalline, lo conducono a quella suprema facoltà estetica ed a quella forma di vita più nobile e ricca di più libere opportunità di esprimersi. Le sue non sono mai caricature; il soggetto ricorrente, sia nei significati che nella medesima costellazione di significanti, è: il crollo della sindrome borghese, (borghese inteso in senso lato); egli lo smaschera attraverso la sempiterna ed insuperata tecnica della pittura ad olio, smascherando così i nostri alibi e tutte le false apparenze omologanti nelle quali siamo borghesemente protesi; ma a questo virus propone un potente antidoto. I significanti stratificati sulla crosta pittorica ambiana operano, interagendo intensamente, con il sistema nervoso degli astanti. Nulla nella sua pittura è confortevole, consolatorio, decorativo, d’intrattenimento o illustrativo. Egli è pittore antiborghese in questo senso. E lo è più di quanto lui stesso lo dichiari apertamente in alcuni dei suoi titoli rivelatori; lo è sempre stato, prima ancora di dipingere o disegnare. E lo è tanto più in un epoca fiacca e materialista come la nostra, in cui il dilagante conformismo ha raggiunto il suo apice a braccetto con l’apogeo dell’informazione ed un controllo senza limiti per mezzo della tecnologia e delle macchine, dei devices, degli automi o degli androidi, dello spontaneismo d’autori indipendenti convenzionali. Il suo sottrarsi alla ‘diminuzione di vitalità’ tramite quell’ambiana intensità fa sorgere la differenza tra l’automa e l’umano. Corpi indistinguibili, come i suoi lavori compendiano e adducono, dall’ultimo dei tipi espressi dall’umanità: un androide o un automa che hanno sentimenti di un borghese, entrambi forniti di un organismo sensibile alle medesime sollecitazioni esterne.
Quanto detto lo rende certamente il più originale artista possibile vivente che io conosca, con la diffidenza ed il sospetto che ciò comporta automaticamente in coloro che percepiscono, anche se solo in forma obnubilata ed incosciente, questa stupefacente libertà come un’incessante rimprovero. (…)
E’ contro tutto ciò che lo spirito del nostro tempo comanda: la superficialità (in una parola) che Ambo si rivolta, rovesciandolo con sensibilità e attenzione, poesia e dedizione destinata proprio nei confronti di ciò che pare non avere un posto nell’etica e nell’estetica del nuovo millennio. Non è una vera e propria reazione la sua, credo piuttosto sia la poca disponibilità a lasciarsi annullare che, innata, alberga in lui; qui sorge la differenza con i tutti e con ciò che manca ai più e che, involontariamente, ne fanno un raro caso ed esempio di una particolare forma di individualità.
La democrazia, mascherata come una sua valorizzazione, depaupera l’individualità e si è rivelata di fatto la tomba dell’arte, partecipando attivamente a quel bluff che è a monte delle arti contemporanee. (…)
La stupidità invischia, coinvolge, attrae. Lo spettacolo esorcizza, come una messa, o un’orgia. La massa, trasbordante sentimentalismo e caricata di quel sentimento conformista il quale, tra tutti, è il sentimento che più attecchisce, è sempre pronta a reagire, regolamentando ogni cosa entro l’ordine borghese imperante. Questi uomini dell’ordine non falliscono mai nel riconoscere a fiuto ciò che è loro ostile e trascinarlo in uno dei loro autodafé laici.
Ambo è, al di là della propria volontà, sempre al di fuori e quindi non rispetta il sacro dei luoghi comuni, del pensiero unico, dei tabù, dello spettacolo di destra e di sinistra, ammesso che ci sia una differenza tra lo spettacolo della sub cultura di destra e della sub cultura di sinistra nell’Italia, dal dopo-guerra ad oggi.
I borghesi, come tutte le classi prima di loro, sono così disperatamente aggrappati al potere ma, mentre l’estetica della classe media insieme al suo illusorio potere temporale dilaga, egli si rende immune ad essa, come se per miracolo la grazia fosse discesa su di lui rivestendolo atemporalmente. (…)
Il percorso di Ambo, così come lo conosciamo, rappresenta il punto di arrivo di una lunga evoluzione curiosamente ascetica.
Non possiamo definirlo un ‘tardo umanista del ventunesimo secolo’ e mai in lui si ravvisano tracce, residui o macchie di ‘antropocentrismo’. Piuttosto intravedo un antico, luminoso percorso di reminiscenza.
Egli conosce l’incanto di una visione arcaica, nel binomio inscindibile vita/arte; non aderisce alla frenesia dell’attivismo circostante e, se confrontata a quella della maggior parte delle persone, vive il più liberamente è possibile nella società contemporanea ed in quella cittadina. La sua è anche una rielaborazione del classico che compie con due processi simultanei: rigenera l’eternità rovinando il tempo presente. Questo (r)innovatore, mettendo a fuoco la reale sostanza dei rapporti umani, opera una demolizione di strutture e di sovrastrutture, squalificando i luoghi comuni e le abitudini; il suo pensare è condizionato molto poco da ciò che condiziona ora per ora il sociale, nel progressivo restringimento degli spazi di questo mondo; tenendosi lontano dai polverosi e riarsi deserti dell’attualità, spinge lo spettatore nel movimento di un pensiero che si fa incompatibile con i mezzi di comunicazione, di informazione e tecnologici; si prende il lusso d’appropriarsi di un tempo inconcedibile se non agli appartenenti al sangue regale, agli iniziati. Egli, rendendosi autosufficiente, procede nell’accrescere in modo smisurato quella libertà, tenuta al riparo dagli altrui occhi attraverso una dissimulazione degna di un abile giocatore che dispone di un considerevole numero di carte. Il suo è uno splendore tipico dell’arte universale, d’ogni tempo, in questo senso non gareggia in modernità con gli altri, e non conosce mode, perciò è stato a giusto titolo definito: classico. Sospende aloni di figure umane e aloni di luoghi e di non-luoghi nel limbo di una gravità neutralizzata, cariche di una strana quanto anacronistica intensità; capovolge i valori sociali unanimemente accettati; (…)   Leggi ‘Reminiscenza ambiana’ per intero

Edgar Ziegler – 2020

Risultati eccelsi

Antonio Maria Borrelli, in ogni suo lavoro, affronta il riconoscibile in chiave oggettiva. E’ pittore assai colto a livello di contenuti, con radici ricollegabili alla metafisica del Novecento che ha abbandonato il mero simbolismo, sconfinando in una irrealtà che non va confusa con il Surrealismo.
Estremamente serio nell’affrontare il tema immaginifico che si è proposto, in certe composizioni esprime la necessità di sfidare sino in fondo se stesso, per ottenere risultati eccelsi. Borrelli è pittore mentale, che esprime le sue emozioni tramite la bellezza del pigmento steso sulla tela con precisa calibratura e attenzione ai rapporti tonali, ma tutt’altro che freddo, dato che la sua tavolozza è messaggera di forza e di sensualità.

Josè Van Roy Dalì – 2015

Collezione Sgarbi

Un’arte unica nel suo genere

La coloritissima arte di Antonio Maria Borrelli è unica nel suo genere. Molteplici le tematiche affrontate e molteplici i colori che la caratterizzano.

Sul momento le sue opere possono sembrare semplicistiche, nei soggetti e nell’impostazione, ma è facile cambiare idea e scorgere, in mezzo a questa “semplicità”, una segnica complessa. Lo stile di Borrelli è il risultato di un processo di sintesi artistica, che vede l’artista analizzare la realtà che lo circonda e che lo riguarda intimamente, per destrutturarla e ricomporla secondo il proprio punto di vista.

I colori sono brillanti, accesi e quasi folcloristici negli accostamenti e nelle sfumature, ma non per questo poco lavorati o casuali. Le figure tendono ad essere stilizzate, a tratti caricaturali, e vi è una forte componente allegorica che rende le sue opere a tratti pirandelliane: elementi tragicomici, denuncia sociale e quotidianità diventano così l’ispirazione primaria da cui scaturisce il flusso creativo di Borrelli.

            Paolo Levi – 2016          

Sguardo sulla pittura di AMBO

Con la sua estrosità, il suo talento e la sua ricerca stilistica si è distinto attraverso una spiccata personalità artistica, frutto di costante ricerca espressiva ed esuberante creatività.   

Sandro Serradifalco – 2022

L’autobiografismo in “Quadro con Gesù”

Ci si avvede di un quadro dal contenuto religioso e nel contempo autobiografico, ricco di elementi tratti dai Vangeli. Ciò che in questo caso interessa l’osservatore è la realizzazione del quadro, frutto di una precisa sperimentazione legata al colore utilizzato come segno di contorno. I colori sono di ricerca tonale e naturale con la purezza del blu, dell’azzurro, del verde e del rosso. L’artista nulla lascia al caso, tutto è precostituito a livello di contenuto e di forma.

Paolo Levi – 2015

Narrazione visiva

Si tratta di una narrazione visiva di pregevole esecuzione tecnica, che coniuga la figura sacra di Gesù benedicente con immagini tratte dalla quotidianità laica. In un accostamento che si offre a diverse interpretazioni. Non ci sono tuttavia presenze occasionali, ma immagini che uniscono armoniosamente immanenza e trascendenza.

Stefania Bison – 2015

Un grande equilibrio formale

Il talento artistico di Antonio Maria Borrelli non risiede solo nella mera corretta esecuzione di un’opera, ma trova la sua massima espressione nei contenuti e nella ricerca segnica. Un’opera dal sapore religioso che però affonda le sue radici in una iconografia decisamente moderna ed attuale, come è facile notare da elementi contemporanei come il surf o un gruppo di amici al mare. Nonostante l’utilizzo di soggetti diversi e apparentemente incompatibili, l’opera risulta armoniosa e dotata di un grande equilibrio formale.

Sandro Serradifalco – 2015

Profeta dell’immagine

Un dipinto apparentemente allegorico, ma che in realtà nasconde significati ben più seri e ricchi di un simbolismo intrinseco. Antonio Maria Borrelli diventa così profeta dell’immagine, riuscendo a dare una collocazione spazio-temporale corretta a tutti gli elementi dell’opera che visibilmente appartengono a contesti ed epoche diverse. Il messaggio è da decifrare come un rebus artistico che ognuno può interpretare seguendo il proprio cuore e il proprio istinto.

Salvatore Russo – 2015

Borrelli

Per atavica virtù, figlio del ben noto Antonio, il giovane Antonio Maria Borrelli, allievo al corso di scultura del maestro De Vincenzo dell’Accademia di Belle Arti di Napoli, è pieno di facoltà, in un’autonomia di visione artistica inserita nel contesto contemporaneo. Il suo sguardo che nasce da un ambito concettuale, di volta in volta sosta sui momenti concreti della vitalità della scultura; e questo in virtù di una pratica del mestiere che egli sposa arditamente alla qualità del vedere e del sentire, in una conferma che il maneggiare e l’usufruire dei materiali che la civiltà odierna offre a lui, giovane di apertura, la possibilità a rendersi disponibile a capire e a penetrare nei meandri della plasticità. Per tale sua già assunta posizione, riteniamo Borrelli osservatore dell’attualità, di cui, quale interprete, riprende immagini fortemente denotate che egli rivisita attraverso uno specchio, ribaltandone il giusto fascino con più dilatazioni.

Mario Maiorino – 1999

Filosofo della vita e visionario

Inventa situazioni d’istinto costruttivistico in cui l’ambiguità, le luci e le ombre degli eventi esistenziali, trovano spazi ed articolazioni praticabili da decifrate presenze, che hanno ruoli e connotazioni fisico-psicologiche, risolte nella resa visiva di un ipotesi o dato di fatto.
Il gioco tattile, strutturato dalle scansioni geometriche, rivela una sensibilità profonda, che si interroga sulle complesse inter-relazioni antropo-sociologiche, specie quelle presenti nelle crisi di identità.
Il labirinto illusorio, optical cinetico, assolve una funzione importante nella rigorosa presa di coscienza delle necessità prefigurate (nulla di nuovo sotto il sole dell’uomo): la fluidità delle intermittenze, suggerisce ipotesi di cambiamento. “Quello” è infatti il luogo congeniale al filosofo della vita e al visionario che non rinuncia a sperare/sognare.

Angelo Calabrese – 1999

L’emotività e l’inquietudine

Antonio Maria Borrelli plasma nelle sue sculture i suoi modelli con una qualità innata che procede dall’estro e dalle istintive ritmie che mantiene nelle forme. Opere che racchiudono in sé una grande emotività ma nello stesso tempo inquietudine. L’emotività e l’inquietudine del Borrelli sono espresse in un gioco ritmato di segni e valori plastici che lo conducono a esprimere sentimenti universali e quel senso vivo di partecipazione e di pieno godimento culturale.

Giovanna Capossela – 1999

Ambian reminiscence

He stay anchored to tradition and reality; he arrives at new original pictorial results. His inspirations are manifold, while his way of painting, of making art and therefore of living is alternative and eclectic. His creative sources, with extensive use of citations, can derive from different historical genres and from the most disparate past and modern iconographic themes.
Both places and remains in the immense territory of the great tradition, offering an image painting that owes even to more recent painters such as Francis Bacon.
Looking at certain canvases, this words come to mind: sacred, twilight, sleepwalking, hypnotism, animal magnetism, mysticism, reality, intensity, truth, dream. Words that appear contradictory to each other, however often in his works they are together harmoniously.
Nothing in his painting is comfortable, consolatory, decorative, entertaining or illustrative.
He paints things of nature that are in constant movement or that suddenly stop, as if by magic; countryside and trees on expanses of inert meadows under convulsive skies or heavenly vaults where time has slowed down and the clouds dissolve in slow motion. Twisted branches under colors that extend on the canvas, like calm summer skies.
As trapped by a deadly grasp of faceless covers, Ambo, by hyperbolic impetus, rising above the orgy, withdraws himself and takes himself out of the green room. As the unveiling of the truth we can speak of prophetic art; a prophetic art that has seen two different moods and two different ways of painting alternate in these first two decades: first with a turbulent heart and, subsequently, with an always mystical but more serene heart, because as illuminated by the light of the knowledge.
Ambo hasn’t watched TV channels since 2007; “The last news I saw was broadcasting the images of Italy world soccer champion in 2006 ”. The faces that followed one another on the screen frightened him, and he was forced to shut down.
I won’t say anything about the television eitheron information in Italy after Ambo did it with his paintings.
He is against everything that the spirit of our time commands: superficiality (said in one word) that Ambo turns, overturning it with sensitivity and attention, poetry and dedication destined precisely for what seems to have no place in ethics and aesthetics of the new millennium. His reaction is not a real reaction, I think it is rather a little willingness to let oneself be annihilated which, innately, resides in him; here arises the difference with i all and with what most people lack and who, involuntarily, make it a rare case and example of a particular form of individuality.
His intensity is something anachronistic and in this respect, this time, there is one in him lack towards contemporaries: there is no diminution of vitality in him.
Democracy, disguised as its enhancement, impoverishes individuality and it is de facto revealed the tomb of art, actively participating in the bluff that is upstream of contemporary arts.
Stupidity entangles, involves, attracts. The show exorcizes, like a religious service, or an orgy. The mass, overflowing with sentimentality and charged with that feeling conformist who, of all, is the feeling that most takes root, is always ready to reacts, regulating everything within the ruling bourgeois order. These men of the order never fail to recognize by smell what is hostile to them and drag it into one of their lay autodafés.
Ambo, beyond his will, is always outside and so he does not respect the sacred of clichés, of taboos, of the spectacle of the Italian culture of the left and right. (…) The bourgeois, like all classes before them, are so desperately clinging to power but, while the aesthetics of the middle class together with its illusory temporal power it spreads, he makes himself immune to it, as if by a miracle grace had descended on himcovering it timelessly. 

The unquestionable originality of the Ambo’s work allows him not to amalgamate, distinguishing himself in the epoch in which he is on earth, and this is all the more reason for the fact that he starts from it. The pictorial vivacity reflects her intellectual vivacity and her work reveals, immediately, the cultural depth of the one who expelled her. His works are immediately recognizable; Ambo invents a style that is impossible to imitate. Every time he returns with a new group of finished works, it is an event of history and not only of art.
The path of Ambo, as we know it, represents the arrival point of a long evolution.
We cannot call him a ‘late humanist of the twenty-first century’ and there are never traces, residues or stains of ‘anthropocentrism’ in him. Rather I see an ancient, luminous path of reminiscence.
He lives as freely as possible in contemporary society and in the city.

Edgar Ziegler – 2020

Sublime results

Antonio Maria Borrelli, in all his works, tackles in objective key the recognizable. He is a very cultured painter in terms of contents, with roots explicable to the metaphysics of the twentieth century who abandoned the mere symbolism, encroaching on in an unreality that should not be confused with Surrealism.
Extremely serious in addressing the highly imaginative issue that it was proposed, in certain compositions expresses need to challenge himself to the end, to achieve sublime results. Borrelli is mental painter, who expresses his emotions through the beauty of the pigment extended on the canvas with precise calibration and attention to tonal relationships, but far from coldbecause his palette is the messenger of him strength and sensuality.

Josè Van Roy Dalì – 2015

Sgarbi’s collection

I, more than other critics in Italy, have pushed me to apply a method that in France has a long tradition in the Salons des Refusés, where it was possible to recognize, in less difficult and less ‘crowded’ times, artists like Manet or Gauguin. Now i have seen thousands of proposals, knowing that much are not good.

The “Sgarbi Collection” project selects some of them, like a costellation in an exanding firmament. The choice of your work for my collection of prints and drawings attests the value of your work and your constant artistic commitment. In an era marked by the attempt to asssingn a price to everything and everyone and a degree of expendability on the market, the art collection returns to be the means by which the works regain their real value, without “price” and without time.

                                                                                Vittorio Sgarbi – 2017

A unique art

The colorful art of Antonio Maria Borrelli is unique of its kind. The themes dealt are numerous and multiple colors characterize it.

At time his works for subjects and setting may seem simplistic, but it’s easy to change your mind and see, in the middle of his “simpliccity”, a complex of signs. Borrelli’s style is the result of an artistic synthesis process, seeing the artist to analyze the reality around him and that concerns him intimately, for deconstruct and reassemble it in agreement with his own vision.

The colors are brilliant, bright and almost folkloristic in the combinations and shades, they are very worked and never casuals. The figures are stylized, sometimes they are caricaturals and there is a strong allegorical component that makes his works sometimes like a work of Pirandello: the primary inspiration whence the creative flow of Borrelli springs are: tragicomic elements, social commentary and daily life.

Paolo Levi – 2016

Look at AMBO’s painting

(…) It seems to me that in these paintings there is a strong attraction and interest for nature and the world of trees and meadows. What is striking (and surprising) is the fact that the human figures are very small, almost invisible (a bit like Friedrich’s monk on the beach). Particular is then the “Lago Sirio near Ivrea” of 2019, which seems like a double painting. (…)
(…) I like paintings especially the natural landscapes. Firstly the two “Saturday 18th and Sunday 17th at the lakes”, 2022 and “Saturday 18th and Sunday 17th on the mountain” of 2023. Both are characterized by an “off the air”: a person (you?) looks at the world. This approach (as well as the time inversion) constitutes an original and interesting solution (I don’t know if it is found in other twentieth century painters). It is clear that the painting here wants to suggest a whole discussion. But which? Here I open a parenthesis because I delve into philosophical reflections and it seems to me that when I have touched on topics of this type your reaction has always been rather antiphrastic. So: there is a spectator who looks at the world from the outside. It is a position that could fit into a Neoplatonic approach: the world is a mere illusory appearance and we must get out of this prison. This is compatible with Gnosticism which draws heavily on Neoplatonism. The image of the external spectator could also be reconciled with a hermeneutic approach – in the sense that the world as we see it is an interpretation of the subject – but I don’t think this is your position. (…)
(…) “Pop culture” means popular culture, but here the adjective “popular” i.e. “of the people” simply indicates an objective and not subjective genitive. In other words, the people are not creators of this culture, but essentially objects, passive users on whom this culture is imposed. In short, these are cultural elements that presuppose and convey a mentality and a vision of the world that were built by the dominant oligarchy for the people with the precise aim of conditioning them (and not simply putting them to sleep). (…)
(…) Your excerpts from Schuré were very useful to me for their clarity and conciseness; so: are easily deduced the assumptions of a Weltanschauung. Among these assumptions, one in particular may be the following: “the great religions have an external and an intimate history, the second is what we can define as Gnosis”. The background panorama in which this statement is located is Tradition, that is, that complex of re-elaborations that refer to figures such as: Hermes, Osiris, Orpheus, Pythagoras, Moses and Christ himself, etc. These have sedimented as theosophy starting from the eighteenth century, merging into what for simplicity could be called the Steiner-Blavatsky trend. The question that comes to mind is the following: perhaps your speech is reserved for a select few? Initiated? (…)
(…) this is anti-bourgeois operation; on the other hand, it is true that even to Pasolini the past seemed to be the only force truly contesting the present; that there was nothing that could bring down the present like the past. You reiterate that the main concern of the Great Church was to eradicate any historical and literary testimony in this regard, beyond the centuries-old persecution of the first Christians. In short, the Church has always seen Gnosticism as the enemy par excellence: to be fought and eliminated. This changes things completely: on the one hand it sweeps away a series of misunderstandings relating to your “Christological” production (I mean the paintings of explicit reference to the iconography linked to Christianity); on the other hand it opens up a whole other discussion about it, bringing a whole series of new possible misunderstandings and misunderstandings and ambiguities. (…)

Francesco Giacomo Rodolfo Cantamessa – 2023

A manifest of our time

It is a painting with a strong visual impact that embodies the creative practice of Antonio Maria Borrelli, a painting that finds in the imprudent robustness of the sign the substantial reason for a moral commitment of not negligible importance.

The criticism has fully valued the content of the painting of Borrelli by providing, for example, with the words of José Van Roy Dalì, to highlight how he is “a painter very educated in terms of content, linked to the metaphysics of the twentieth century that has abandoned the mere symbolism, trespassing in a unreality that should not be confused with surrealism. ”
These notations are valid to perimeter the contextual datum of a painting which, by virtue of its resentful and corroded line, no less than for its timbral vibrativity, can be inscribed within the ‘expressionistic’ declinations, within which, however, it is necessary take into account that the creative delineation that makes Borrelli does not go to configure a ‘stylistic’ adhesion to the ‘expressionist’ temper just invoked, but rather, the choice of a ‘categorical’ delibation.
This allows us to suggest an alignment of Borrelli’s creative practice in the sphere of an evaluative measure that is that which is discussed – practically timeless – throughout the history of art, identifying, from time to time, pragmatic executive inside which is affirmed, promoted by the prowess of content, a lunge signic fed chromatic vibrancy.

In 2010, discussing the artist, Umberto Giacometti emphasized the engaging robustness of Borrelli’s painting, pointing out the ability to be a witness of our time.
“In the era of digital and network Antonio Maria deals with traditional means such as oil paints, brushes and canvases his exhibition, and in a fabric of primitive signs and colors of extraordinary intensity, he bends the invincible protagonists of so many adventures ourselves, facing the mirror of greed, of solitude, of impotence, until we return to the animal satisfaction of primary needs (…) “.
There is the title of a work in particular that is striking for the moral force it expresses: “History has no experience”, an oil on canvas of 2010, in which the author deals with a very complex theme, that of describing violence, a multiple violence, with many faces and many angles, too simple to reduce in the sphere of exasperation but, at the same time, too insinuating to imagine to be able to fully understand the dangers it unfolds.
It is a work that allows us to understand how the painting of this artist can actually be understood as one of the living and effective testimonies of our present, a present within which it seems impossible to take the step forward of a humanity that has learned from its experiences, despite having learned, instead, from its own history to move forward the world of empirical knowledge and uses of nature.

Even in the light of this, this work appears to be a manifest of our time, considering, however, that it does not hesitate to make the contents of a ‘globalized communication’, within which some images become emblematic and end up with zero the drama of the contents they possess, like the one, effectively taken by Borrelli in the work we are discussing, of the terrorist of the years of lead who, bent just on his knees and his head covered by a balaclavas, points the gun at one of his death targets by tightening the weapon energetically with both hands.

Rosario Pinto – 2015

Images and senses

The living dead, talking animals and superheroes, the characters are called by Antonio Maria Borrelli for a new life off screen.

Samples of fiction, mainly those of the imaginary television of his generation, must go through the trials of the most visionary film copyright and art history to reconstruct the symbolic world of the artist.Not without repulsion and attraction, boredom and surprise, the experiment, which ihave in this author a literary novel should not be overlooked before, can give rise to new and unexpected reactions.
In the digital’s and network’s age Antonio Maria faces with traditional media like oil paints, brushes and canvases this exhibition, and a fabric dyes and primitive signs of extraordinary intensity, fold the invincible protagonists of many adventures, ourselves in the mirror of greed, loneliness, impotence, up to us to return to animal satisfaction of basic needs of food, mate, defecate.

As the spiritual fathers of his art, with scrupulous dedication cited in many titles of his works, he moves with daring eclecticism in a large field of cultural references to give us finally a purely autobiographical testimony, able to speak without pretense to each of us.

Umberto Giacometti – 2010

Redeemed bourgeois

It was at the Kunsthaus in Zurich a few years ago, and Antonio Maria Borrelli said: “… if you see a work that you believe may be able to do yourself, or you have not noticed to be a great artist, or is a mediocre work that many are able to do or think. “
Today in the era of the triumph of bourgeois, namely of the mediocrity , I wonder in the world of contemporary art how many works can be produced by most public, maybe for this they are so much estimated,  as the karaoke singers.

(…)Schopenhauer’s philosophy, the Socratic reflections, Fassbinder’s cinema, the influence of Bacon’s colors, etchings by Goya, and the music of the 70s, especially poetry, or truth, in the sense that each animal remained although in captivity, can not express every day; paintings like: “Your computer is a chair for painters lame”, or “the meaning is a stone in his mouth to the signifier,” by Jacques  Lacan Freud’s undertaker, or “VIP sucks cane “, taken from one of his books ever edited, in my opinion they need a complete artistic criticism, as is his work in relation to other artists or the brethren who pass through it.

Edgar Ziegler – 2012

Ambo the classic

Classic, yet, perhaps because of this, “more modern of the moderns” Pasolini would say, is the pictorial result is achieved for the technique used (oil on canvas, but with exclusive use of primary colors), and for the complex cultural development can not be reduced in a scheme, and that has his methodological roots in ancient times forcing to shifts in a series of levels of analysis the user, which is so obliged to find himself in an activity for not immediately rejected, I would say that this type of operation has gone a long time by consumers of the arts. All this, for those who can, is in a picture of AMBO, whose meaning seems to me to push the human trace forwards rather than backwards as is now the norm;  even for this classic, that is eternal, which moves in his time relieving it, and somehow without contemporary colleagues.

Renato Cafasso – 2012

Meetings

We could define the “works” of Antonio Maria Borrelli as “meetings”, they refer to characters, to events, to a thought, to a philosophy. Paintings crowded with symbols as in a historical tale where figurative surrealism unravels among various figures, animals, landscapes and phrases or clarifying words. All to accentuate the interpretation of works and operators in the various branches of art by creating unsuspected suggestions, catapulting the viewer into a world where the figure, the man and his culture, are at the center of universality and paying attention to as knowledge also passes through the meanders of imagination and the construction of a comic strip life.

The world of Antonio Maria Borrelli is always fantastic, enterprising, dreamy even when it refers to reality, that of life, sometimes hostile, other unpredictable, and every fact is reported with a way of seeing that can also tear a smile, but then discover that it is only irony.

The artist opens with a detailed and detailed handwriting, intense colors, yellow, red, celestial that alternate in deliberate contrasts that enliven the great wings of the butterfly and the human forms twisted and stunned, dominated by mighty steeds and by the unaware Fate of mythology . The artist expresses the fullness of life and affirms the idea of his art that is certainly the peculiarity of his message.

Giorgio Falossi – 2017

AMBO in the Von Zeidler Art Gallery in Berlin

His ability to express an individual and immediately recognizable style is an indication of a technical maturity that allows him to rise up in the contemporary art scene.

Angelo Crespi – 2022

The man who gave birth to his mother

This work expresses a strong feeling of love in the generic sense of the term. In this painting we observe two figures, one male and one female, but it does not mean that they are representing their love, understood between a man and a woman, but of mother earth and the children who populate it. From a complex biblical metaphor on the situation of our planet, where Mother Nature and her best fruits are destined to succumb due to the destructive intrusiveness of the guests who populate it, incapable of showing respect to it.

Mariella Ricca – 2023

Antonio Maria Borrelli

With his flair, his talent and his stylistic research he distinguished himself through a strong artistic personality, the result of constant expressive research and exuberant creativity.

Sandro Serradifalco – 2022

The autobiography in “Picture with Jesus”

A picture of religious content and at the same time autobiographical, packed with elements taken from the Gospels. In this case the observer have to watch the realization of the picture, the result of a precise experimentation connected to the color used as a sign of contour. The colors are natural and tonal research with the purity of the blue, blue, green and red. The artist leaves nothing to chance, everything is pre-established in terms of content and the form.

Paolo Levi – 2015

A visual narrative

It is a visual narrative of excellent technical execution, combining the sacred figure of blessing Jesus with images from everyday laic drawn. The approach gives itself for different interpretations. However there are not the occasional appearances, but images who combining harmoniously the immanence and the transcendence.

Stefania Bison – 2015

A great formal balance

The artistic talent of Antonio Maria Borrelli lies not only in the mere proper execution of an artwork, but finds its highest expression in content and in search of signs. An artwork by religiousflavor but is rooted in a very modern and contemporary iconography, as is easy to see from contemporary elements such as surfing or a group of friends at sea. Despite the use of different subjects and seemingly incompatible, the work is harmonious and has a great formal balance.

Sandro Serradifalco – 2015

The Prophet of the image

Apparently an allegorical paintingapparently , but in reality hides meanings much more serious and rich in symbolism inherent. Antonio Maria Borrelli becomes the prophet of the image, managing to give a correct collocation in the space and in the time for all the elements of the work who visibly belong to different eras and contexts. The message has to be deciphered as a rebus art who everyone can interpret according to their own heart and their instincts.

Salvatore Russo – 2015

Borrelli

For ancestral virtues, Antonio Maria Borrelli the young son of the well known Antonio, is a student at the master’s course in sculpture De Vincenzo Academy of Fine Arts in Naples, is full of faculties, in an autonomy of contemporary artistic vision in the context . His gaze born from a conceptual framework, from time to time he stop on the moments of the vitality of the sculpture, and this by virtue of a practice of the trade that he boldly marries to the quality of seeing and feeling, a confirmation that the handle and the use of materials that modern civilization offers to him, the young, the opportunity to be ready to understand and penetrate in the maze of plasticity. That’s already taken place, we look to Borrelli as an observer of current events, of which, as a performer, takes pictures denoted strongly that he revisits through a mirror, overturning the right charm with more dilatations.

Mario Maiorino -1999

Philosopher’s life and visionary

He invents situations instinctively constructivist where the ambiguity, the lights and shadows of life events, find spaces and joints practicable deciphered by appearances, which have roles and physical and psychological connotations, resolved in the visual rendering of a hypothesis or fact .
The game tactile, textured geometric scans, reveals a deep feeling, that questions about the complex inter-relationships anthropological-sociological, especially those in the identity crisis.
The maze illusion, optical kinetic, performs an important function in the strict awareness of the need prefigured (nothing new under the sun of man): the fluidity of intermittent, suggests hypotheses for change. “That” is in fact the place congenial to the philosopher’s life and the visionary who does not give up hope / dream.

Angelo Calabrese – 1999

The emotionality and the restlessness

Antonio Maria Borrelli shaping in his sculptures his models with an innate quality that goes by the inspiration and instinctive rhythms that keeps the forms. Works that contain in themselves a great emotion but at the same time restlessness. The emotionality  and the restlessness of Borrelli are expressed in a rhythmic game of signs and plastic values that led him to express universal feelings and that living sense of participation and full enjoyment of culture.

Giovanna Capossela – 1999

Résultats sublimes

Dans tous ses travaux, Antonio Maria Borrelli affronte les sujets reconnaissables en clef objective. Peintre plutôt cultivè au niveau du contenu, avec des racines qui ramènent à la métaphysique du XXeme siècle, qui a abandonné le simple symbolisme, l’intrusion dans une irréalité qui ne devrait pas être confondue avec le surréalisme.

Extrêmement sérieux à aborder la question de l’imagination qu’il propose, dans certaines compositions, il exprime la nécessité de remettre en question tout le chemin lui­même, pour obtenir des résultats sublimes.

Borrelli est un peintre mental, qui exprime ses émotions à travers la beauté de mentir sur la toile, avec un pigment calibré et précis, une attention aux relations tonales. Loin d’être froid, que sa palette est un messager de la force et de sensualité.

José Van Roy Dalí – 2015

La rédemption du bourgeois