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 the body at the center of his artistic experience. In continuity with classical thought, which made man the measure of all things, the painter tells his story in his first solo exhibition through a series of figurative canvases, where man, the human body, is the measure of all things. A genre that is undervalued today due to fashion, yet it has deep roots and resides in every spirit even if in disguise, as archetypes teach. The representation of the nude body has ancient origins; one could say that the body was born before the face, before the landscape, even before still life, even before writing; think of the Venus of Willendorf kept in Vienna and all prehistoric Venuses. The erotic body that Mario Borrelli narrates through his works is not a “bare,” “perfect,” or “undressed” body. To better understand this perspective, one must pause on a brief and happy insight by Kenneth Clark, the British art historian of the 1950s. Clark introduces a distinction that would gain great popularity in the English language. To be naked, naked, means to be devoid of clothes, and at the same time suggests that sense of embarrassment that almost all of us feel in this condition. The word nude, naudo, on the contrary, does not imply this sense of discomfort and is used in art. It is a body reshaped, therefore harmonious, flourishing and confident. It is as if nudity were a form of clothing. But of what kind? Our painter-tailor outfits the bodies of Eros, evoking the life-desire through sacramental epiphanies of the flesh, so the nude body slips from the contingent to rise to an idea, to a conjunction of sacred and profane love. Freedberg writes that images operate in a way that excites desire; and it is through the eyes that the gaze on Mario Borrelli’s paintings transports other senses to the mystical contemplation of the image. It is the flesh that becomes sacred, a terrestrial prayer that elevates the spirit revitalized by the images, excited by the Dionysian impulse; it is an insurrection and revolution of instinct, which in turn transfigures into feeling. Therefore the mysticism of the flesh derived from the painter’s erotic narration is powerful, poignant, and pushes one to investigate what lies hidden, what hides, almost ashamed for convenience, convention, moralizing fiction. One must never forget, the artist seems to suggest, that the seduction of forms is as sacred as the bodies moved by Eros. Naked bodies, veiled, partly covered, erotically bind the spectator through a detail: a hand, a drapery, a strand of hair, etc. A transfiguration occurs: Eros becomes a mystery and the sacred matrix emerges in all its shameless power, and it is here that one can glimpse the ultimate truth of existence. Naked bodies, veiled, partly covered, erotically bind the spectator through a detail: a hand, a drapery, a strand of hair, etc. A transfiguration occurs: Eros becomes a mystery and the sacred matrix emerges in all its shameless power, and it is here that one can glimpse the ultimate truth of existence. The vitalism erupts, perhaps assuming different beauty of truth, the transparency of Eros imposes itself without shame to show itself because it is the measure of all things. In the nudity depicted by Mario Borrelli one perceives the veritas, that which the Latins, not by chance, equated with the good nudity free of flagitium, a naked veritas of Klimt, the naked and pure truth, that has no fear of revealing itself. The naturalistic images tell their story in a space-non-space metastory, outside precise space-time connotations and within boundaries that could be defined as heroic: the relationship between spaces and figures is, in the painter’s ideal, a revocative necessity and does not limit the immersive suggestiveness, but rather amplifies it in a non-place that produces estrangement. The vitalism explodes, perhaps taking on different beauty of truth, the transparency of Eros imposes itself without shame to show itself because it is the measure of all things. In the nudity depicted by Mario Borrelli one perceives the veritas, that which the Latins, not by chance, equated with the good nudity free of flagitium, a naked veritas of Klimt, the naked and pure truth, that has no fear of revealing itself. The naturalistic images tell their story in a space-non-space metastory, outside precise space-time connotations and within boundaries that could be defined as heroic: the relationship between spaces and figures is, in the painter’s ideal, a revocative demand and does not limit the immersive suggestiveness, indeed it amplifies it in a non-place that produces estrangement. Finally, the artist, favoring the female nude with soft forms not out of gender vanity, but because in those soft lines resides the victorious eros, emphasizes an erotic triumph, which translates into the tangible form of that creative force that forever fights against Thanatos, its antagonist, bearer of destruction. Finally, the artist, favoring the female nude with soft forms not out of gender vanity, but because in those soft lines resides the victorious eros, emphasizes an erotic triumph, which translates into the tangible form of that creative force that forever fights against Thanatos. But the tension between Eros and Thanatos is told with unspeakable tenderness. And perhaps, in that ecstasy where the figures are crystallized, lies the spiritual place where the artist unexpectedly speaks of himself, of his art and of his painting as prayer and poetry.

By Daniela Marra