Critiques
Critiques
Prof. Eraldo di Vita
Color is born from light, which, traveling along neural pathways, reaches the brain where the chromatic and sensory impression arises. Mario Passarello knows well the origin and effects of color and renders it strong, intense, creating forms always in motion, full of vibrations, which provoke the most varied emotions, as each individual perceives color differently. Passarello knows perfectly well that color, today as yesterday, plays a decisive role in life, in moods, in communication, and in the genesis of ideas. Passarello's art is emotional, sentimental: it is painting in motion because everything flows and passes quickly, like life itself. This poet of painting paints the infinite, his entire inner world, and seeks to transmit it forcefully to the observer. Passarello's paintings are like reflections in mirrors that come to life and move independently of the image, but like in the portrait of Dorian Gray, we are unknowingly conscious of our own change. This is how Passarello's canvases become plays of color, mixtures of matter, a flow that palpitates and quivers, like being subjected to a session of chromotherapy; they are our moods, our feelings, and our emotions. This artist frequents a living painting, strong and charged with hope, a concrete abstractionism, which is the rational representation of the harmony of color and nature through the combination of forms that leave everything to the imagination, that is, the ability to represent things not currently present to sensation, which coincide with fantasy, like the titles Passarello gives to his works: Red Sun, Yellow Sun, The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, The Journey to the Island, Angel, or The Portals of Time: colors to be transformed into images together with the artist's thought.
Prof. Nuccio Mula
There are various "in progress" moments in the five lustrums of Mario Passarello's proposing/imposing himself in a creative excursus, always dynamic and fluidifying, representing the self-projection of an inner world in the sign of an "unfinished," as an expression in "progress" of artistic and existential evolution in time, or rather of a symbiosis between continuous personal growth and very intense sign-formal and compositional research, under the banner of an indomitable energy: and every work of his is a "Big Bang" preceded by a "count-down," to synthesize/synchronize energies and epiphanies of inner visions (Matisse) that contrast parallel universes of revelation with those of a reality mendacious in its veiled visibility.
The immediacy of the gesture (albeit hetero-directed by mysterious spirit-guides: here, too, lies the charm of an art that is often unique and unmystified, nor mistifiable) in the mythographic vortex of visions mixed through unexpected centers of gravity between spirals of inspiration and cross-fades; chimeras of fulfillment in the immense attempt to bring order to chaos, rapid-fire sedimentations of stillness barely perceptible to the two physical eyes and the 'third eye,' colors that impregnate the servo-dimensions of evoking and realizing: everything is matter, everything is memory; and matter is memory.
Prof. ssa Margherita Biondo
...He is an instinctive painter, remarkably spontaneous and convincing, who condenses moods and emotions into the vibrations of a brush that gives a clear voice to his expressiveness. He succeeds in finding original solutions within suggestive atmospheres, enveloped in a chromatic texture that is powerful yet balanced. His paintings are meticulously crafted with a highly personal technique, through whose transparencies emerge impulses born from moments of authentic inspiration. Latent reflections, steeped in profound sentiment, mingle with nuances that symbolize the subterranean ritualism of our way of life. The artist finds a way to express his creative capacity through the nervous energy of his brushstrokes, the manipulation of matter, and the forms it assumes, utilizing a chromatic language that simultaneously evokes sensations of joy and pain. What the viewer observes induces a thought formed by the necessary association of ideas, linked to a subtle presence that accompanies memory. ...Painting is used here as a vehicle for peace and justice in the event "All Different, All Equal" for the European campaign against racism, xenophobia, antisemitism, and intolerance. Furthermore, his participation in the "No to Violence" exhibition sought to promote art and culture as a means to condemn all forms of oppression. His compositions stimulate immediate sensations, and in every piece, the representation of energy emerges.
Indeed, all of his works are pervaded by a sense of energy that shifts over time, in motion through the transposition of variegated colors. Observing them closely, one perceives a movement that begins to take on a life of its own according to one's state of mind; it is transfused onto the canvas, where the brush already acts as a limit to what the author's mind seeks to approximate. Material and immaterial seem to blend together in a harmony where the artist's personality explodes through the power of his sensitivity. One cannot help but express a rewarding judgment of Mario Passarello’s work; and to conclude my thoughts, I find it appropriate to cite the following quote by Pablo Picasso: "A painter is not one who paints what he sees, but one who sees what he paints." The artist finds a way to express his creative capacity through the nervous energy of his brushstrokes, the manipulation of matter, and the forms it assumes, utilizing a chromatic language that simultaneously evokes sensations of joy and pain. What the viewer observes induces a thought formed by the necessary association of ideas, linked to a subtle presence that accompanies memory. Indeed, all of his works are pervaded by a sense of energy that shifts over time, in motion through the transposition of variegated colors. Observing them closely, one perceives a movement that begins to take on a life of its own according to one's state of mind; it is transfused onto the canvas, where the brush already acts as a limit to what the author's mind seeks to approximate. Material and immaterial seem to blend together in a harmony where the artist's personality explodes through the power of his sensitivity. One cannot help but express a rewarding judgment of Mario Passarello’s work; and to conclude my thoughts, I find it appropriate to cite the following quote by Pablo Picasso: "A painter is not one who paints what he sees, but one who sees what he paints."
The immediacy of the gesture (albeit hetero-directed by mysterious spirit-guides: here, too, lies the charm of an art that is often unique and unmystified, nor mistifiable) in the mythographic vortex of visions mixed through unexpected centers of gravity between spirals of inspiration and cross-fades; chimeras of fulfillment in the immense attempt to bring order to chaos, rapid-fire sedimentations of stillness barely perceptible to the two physical eyes and the 'third eye,' colors that impregnate the servo-dimensions of evoking and realizing: everything is matter, everything is memory; and matter is memory.
Prof. ssa Marta Martini
In Mario Passarello’s paintings, water, fire, and earth combine in an explosion of light. It is within this light that deep blues dilute into splendid shades of azure, turquoise, and sky blue; and, much like in a theater, the light confounds the spectators, bringing to life foamy waves on the canvas that crash against dark, jagged rocks—waves so high they reach low, rarefied clouds. With great narrative power, the artist recounts his world to the viewer, offering a space where everything is possible—as seen in "The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse," where a ghost ship in the background ferries toward other realities. Furthermore, in many of his paintings, a mass of fire appears, tearing through the canvas and warming the waters that overflow from the frame, evoking everything that represents heat and primordial force.
Prof. ssa Rosetta Romano
The “cupio dissolvi” (desire to dissolve) could be the benchmark for Passarello’s displacement in space and his deferral in time—a harrowing, one might even say perverse, style of painting that actualizes moments and situations through dissonance, agonizing arrhythmias, and downward rarefactions. It is almost a descent into the incandescence of chaos or the underworld; an indistinct realm where everything reveals itself as dark, turbid, and menacing. The somber reds, the smudges, the chasing of greens in a sort of scorched midday—signifying the process of the cognitive self and its relationship to the "other"—reveal an epiphanic radiance and an event: the recognition of the "elsewhere" within bewilderment, and the protection of values that are memorized rather than experienced in real relationships.
Is this expressionlessness within Expressionism, or the desecrating impetus of fallen angels?
The imagopoietic capacity becomes ambiguous, devaluing and converting the supports of the gaze into masses and thorns (looking amidst mutiny, seeing within the scandal of perception, scratching at an insurmountable wall of failed communications); it relegates the sense of "pietas" to an ethics of guilt (the Crucifixion) to restore, through disfiguring vortices, the conflicting significance of our existence and our becoming.