Mario Borrelli - Erotica

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The Grace of Eros by Mario Borrelli
‘’Now, you’ll agree that preferring the soft to what is hard is a demonstration of the nature of Eros,’’ Plato, Symposium, 195d-e

The young painter Mario Borrelli, whom critics refer to as the last of the Romantics, places at the center of his artistic experience the body. In continuity with classical thought, which made man the measure of all things, the painter recounts himself in his first solo exhibition through a series of figurative canvases, where man, the human body, is the measure of all things. A genre undervalued today for fashion, but with deep roots and dwelling in every soul even if camouflaged, as the archetypes also teach. The representation of the nude body has ancient origins; it can be said that the body was born before the face, before the landscape, before still life, even before writing—think of the Venus of Willendorf kept in Vienna and all prehistoric Venus figurines. The erotic body that Mario Borrelli tells through his works is not a “naked,” “perfect,” “undressed” body. To better understand this perspective it is helpful to pause on a brief and happy insight of Kenneth Clark, the British art historian of the 1950s. Clark introduces a distinction that would gain much fortune in English: being naked, naked, means being without clothes, and at the same time suggests that sense of embarrassment that almost all of us in that condition experience. The word nude, however, does not imply this sense of discomfort and is used in art. It is a body re-clothed, therefore harmonious, thriving and confident. It is as if nudity were a form of dress. But of what dress? Our painter-tailor clothes the bodies of Eros, evoking the life-desire through sacred epiphanies of the flesh, so the nude body slips out of the contingent to elevate itself to idea, to a union of sacred and profane love. Freedberg writes that images operate in a way that arouses desire; and it is through the eyes that the gaze on Mario Borrelli’s paintings carries other senses to the mystic contemplation of the image. It is the flesh that becomes sacred, terrestrial prayer that elevates the spirit revitalized by images, excited by the Dionysian impulse; it is insurrection and revolution of the instinct, which in turn transmutes into feeling. Therefore the mysticism of the flesh derived from the painter’s erotic narrative is powerful, poignant, and pushes us to investigate what lies hidden, what hides, almost ashamed by convenience, convention, moralizing fiction. We must never forget, it seems to suggest the artist, that the seduction of forms is sacred as the bodies moved by Eros are sacred. Nude bodies, veiled, partly covered, erotically bind the viewer through a detail: a hand, a drapery, a lock of hair, etc. There is a transfiguring moment: Eros becomes mystery and the sacred matrix emerges in all its shameless power, and it is here that the ultimate truth of existence can be glimpsed. Nude bodies, veiled, partly covered, erotically bind the viewer through a detail: a hand, a drapery, a lock of hair, etc. There is a transfiguration: Eros becomes mystery and the sacred matrix emerges in all its shameless power, and it is here that the ultimate truth of existence can be glimpsed. Vitalism explodes, perhaps taking on various forms of beauty of truth; the transparency of Eros, which has no shame in showing itself because it is the measure of all things, asserts itself. In the nudity represented by Mario Borrelli one sees the veritas, the truth Latin speakers associated, not by chance, with nudity free of flagitium; it is Klimt’s nude veritas, the naked and pure truth that does not fear to reveal itself. The naturalistic images tell their story in a metastoric space-non-space, outside precise spacetime connotations and within boundaries that could be defined as heroic: the relationship between spaces and figures is, for the painter, an evocative requirement and does not limit the immersive suggestiveness; on the contrary, it amplifies it in a non-place that produces estrangement. Vitalism explodes, perhaps taking on various forms of beauty of truth; the transparency of Eros, which has no shame in showing itself because it is the measure of all things, asserts itself. In the nudity represented by Mario Borrelli one sees the veritas, the truth Latin speakers coinciding, not without contradictions, with nudity free of flagitium; it is Klimt’s naked veritas, the truth naked and pure, that does not fear to reveal itself. The naturalistic images tell their story in a metastoric space-non-space, outside precise spacetime connotations and within boundaries that could be defined as heroic: the relationship between spaces and figures is, for the painter, an evocative need and does not limit the immersive suggestiveness; rather it amplifies it in a non-place that produces estrangement. Finally, the artist, preferring the female nude with soft forms, not for gender vanity, but because in that softness lies eros the winner, emphasizes an erotic triumph, expressed in the tangible form of that creative force that eternally battles against Thanatos, his antagonist, bearer of destruction. Finally, the artist, preferring the female nude with soft forms, not for gender vanity, but because in that softness lies eros the winner, emphasizes an erotic triumph, which translates into the tangible form of that creative force that eternally fights against Thanatos. Yet the tension between Eros and Thanatos is told with indescribable tenderness. And it is perhaps, in that ecstasy in which the figures are crystallized, the spiritual place where the artist unexpectedly speaks of himself, of his art and his painting as prayer and poetry.

By Daniela Marra