ROSSANA BORZELLI
Biography
” … Faces, hands, eyes, black, white, what are they? Are they really faces, hands, eyes, not colours? And it is here that the enormous question begins that all his saying conveys to us. … You enter the ‘gallery’ and two joined hands (hands?) attack you with a powerful contrast of black and white. Are they joined hands clamping something? And it is here that you begin to reflect: are two rocks joining? Clouds taking on a different identity and flanking each other like hands? So you realise that they do not ‘tighten’ They do not enclose with definitive force. In the space of the encounter, there is the blackness, Rossana’s ‘blackness’ that is the mystery that emanates from reality, and it is the mystery, a motif of inspiration that arouses restlessness and melancholy: What are those hands clasping?
Their encounter creates a gap in our Mind and makes us go far ‘beyond’. The eyes: another enigma: sometimes only hinted at with a line, eyes that look inwards, ‘not’ through to the outside, eyes that are also well defined, as is done in traditional portraits. But who are they looking at? Where do they look? Certainly not the ‘portrait painter’: they look beyond… far beyond. … ” Armanda, Bari 2006
” … In self-representing himself through his hands (with the background of his own black jumper) he makes them speak to us through gesture and theatrical light. … With the minimum of means, in a rigorous black and white, he manages to communicate, within the maximum tension, an entire experience, a content full of meaning that describes to us the truth of a period of his life.
Lately, feet have also appeared, which, as we know, are with the face and hands the parts of one’s body that speak best about us. Here one cannot help but think of the bare feet of a dancer, they are the tired, aching feet of a dancer, overburdened with the role of being the most important tool (media) of the artistic performance, and one can catch a glimpse in the moment, as a pictorial still, of all the movement that preceded the moment.
As for the portrait, Borzelli allows herself to remove, to set aside, the human face of the person being photographed. …” Paulina Miranda
“…. is aware of the crisis that accompanies portraiture in its difficult task of giving image to an identity that the travails of the contemporary have revealed to be tremendously fragile and split. With this awareness, Borzelli’s works are always in fragments. … And together with the faces, the bodies: also evoked only in certain parts, left to speak through the expressive gestures of the hands, entwined for example in passionate motion, or suggested through plastic games of light and shadow, of fullness and emptiness. “
Antonella Marino, journalist
Rossana Borzelli was born in Rome, lives and works in Manziana (RM). He studied art with Leonardo Aprea in Naples and with Giovanni Crisostomo in Rome. He creates large-scale works: paintings and stage sets, oil paintings on a variety of media, from canvas to wood. He has had numerous exhibitions in Italy and abroad: France, Belgium, Finland, Germany. In 2000, he was awarded the first prize for painting in Cannes, and in 2003-2004, the prizes for best set design in two theatre shows in Bracciano.
Artist co-managed with architect Francesca Romana Marino, Rome.
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