Interview
Flavio Borrelli
My artistic formation developed in Italy, Spain, Arizona, New Mexico, Chile, and France. After graduating in Architecture at the Federico II University in Naples and a period of study at the Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura in Seville, Spain, in 2010, I moved to the United States to collaborate with the architect and artist Paolo Soleri, founder of the project "Arcosanti, urban laboratory." Here I have devoted myself to experimenting with the possible links between art, crafts, and architecture at different scales.
It is there, in the desert of Arizona, that my interest in art began to grow. The following year, in Taos, New Mexico, I participated in the Earthship academy to construct self-sustainable houses made of recycled materials. I moved to South America, Chile, from the United States to work as a bricklayer, acquiring further "manual" experiences in building processes. In 2013 I returned to Italy, where I started my professional studio, "Atelier Borrelli." in Naples. Nevertheless, although I enjoyed being at home, my stay in Italy lasted only a short time. The charm of the desert drew me back to the United States for a challenging assignment. In 2015, I was back again in Arizona to fill in for the next two years as the charge Planning Department Manager for the Arcosanti project.
I have been based in Marseille Since 2018, from where I keep traveling between countries and disciplines to create new events of artistic expression through cultural interaction.
What is your background and how did you start your journey in the art world?
“I think my journey in the art world began when I was a child in the basement of my parent’s house. More than a classic basement, it was a workshop with whatever tool one needed. My dad was not an artist nor a creative person, but he had this ancestral ability to create and fix whatever we needed. I have always been fascinated by his hands. Big, massive, solid, and accurate, like precision tools. He taught me how to use all kinds of tools for creating, building, and repairing whatever our imagination could conceive. I spent all my childhood creating games, cutting wood, assembling stuff, melting iron, and digging. I think this kind of approach had a significant impact on my artistic and personal development and trained my ability to create ideas in my imagination and realize them into reality.”
What does your work aim to say? Does it comment on any current social or political issues?
“Despite the heterogeneity of my production, my varied artistic projects share a central common goal - Man, not in the social or political sense, but rather as a primitive individual armed with intellect, passion, and ability to create, anchored to the solid dimension, to reality, to concreteness, to the earth. I am very shocked at seeing how machines, robots, computers, and software gradually replace humanity. Individual freedom is increasingly getting blind under the spell of influencers, marketing algorithms, and shortsighted mass movements. This concern gives strength and shape to my artistic direction -to support the centrality of Man -as an integrity body-soul-intellect- in the relationships between form and space without falling into the trap of creating art that, shining without substance, becomes pure image, pure consumption.”
Do you plan your work in advance, or is it improvisation?
“My creative process starts from the brain abstraction of ideas that evolve through sketch after sketch before becoming a concrete object in our reality. My head is floating in a cloud full of creative ideas, and my work consists of picking one or two of those ideas and verifying their effectiveness. I am aware all day, looking around and talking to people, that good ideas can come anytime. Usually, when I eat, I have many creative ideas and, to catch them, I make sketches on the tablecloth. I know it is very cliché, but it works so well.”
Are there any art world trends are you following?
“I do not follow any current world art trends. I do not like the idea of "following." Especially in this present time, the word "follower" is abused until it loses any significant meaning. Not long ago, someone close to me asked whether I had artists I follow to inspire my artistic practice. I told her, risking being taken as pretentious, that the only artist that I follow is the artist that lives in myself. But, apart from that, I have always been very impressed by those multidisciplinary artists capable of exploring a multitude of domains through different avenues of creation, never getting stuck in repeating themselves, and always creating something new and impacting.”
“The only artist that I follow is the artist that lives in myself.”
What process, materials and techniques do you use to create your artwork?
“I work with different materials and techniques to explore the movement of my work, which is deeply heterogeneous. Mainly, the choice of the method or the material to use is about the one that suits the best idea to realize. Most of the time, the flow of ideas demands new approaches and inventions. That’s probably why “the use of my hands” is at the center of my work. Through manual crafting, I can respond more effectively to this urgency of the constant invention.”
What does your art mean to you?
“To me, art means freedom. Freedom to create things freely from nothing. Space to understand, express, and reinvent my ideas and thoughts about life and society. Art, for me, is a sort of training. I like the idea of training my creative skills, to teach my ideas, and my capacity to transmute them into reality, developing a personal language that can have an impact on someone else’s life.”
What’s your favourite artwork and why?
“My favorite work is “Carcass of beef” by Chaïm Soutine. I was eighteen when I was visiting a museum, I think it was in Zurich, and while turning the alley corner, I suddenly bumped into this big, huge, violent painting. I got thunderstruck by the colors, combined in a way to create a powerful impact on my conscience. At that time, I discovered a powerful painting and “painting” as a powerful practice of emotional expression.”
Website: www.flavioborrelli.it
Instagram: @atelierborrelli
