Stefano Borella
Contemporary Artist
& Illustrator

THIS IS ROYAL RUMBLE

We’re living in an age where conflict is everywhere. Inside and around us. A choreographed chaos, where even the supposed certainties collapse. A war of all against all, more like a rigged show than a real fight. And yet, the blows still land. The important thing is to have fun.

DEAR OL'WORLD

Through this series, the "world" becomes both witness and victim—deforestation, wildfires, pollution. A silent scream through colors and lines. Art can inspire, provoke, and demand change.

ANIMATIONS

Discover my art in mouvement on:

GESTURES OF COURTESY BETWEEN STRANGERS

The balaclava here becomes a symbol of fear of those we consider different, but also of the possibility that those we deem "threatening" can inspire kind gestures, capable of breaking the monotony and bringing us a little closer. Empathy is also this: learning to see beyond.

"WASH YOUR MOUTH OUT"

"THE MONOLITH"

"UNDER A DIFFERENT LIGHT"

TOUGH TIMES

"THE WRONG IDEAS"

"DISTORTED PERSONALITIES"

"ONE WAY THOUGHTS"

INFLATABLE DOLLS

"AT THE MERCY OF EVENTS"

"PUBLIC RELATIONS"

"I WOULD BUT I CAN NOT"

PATTERNS

"DON CHISCIOTTE"

"THE CHOICE"

"WHAT YOU ARE MADE OF?"

"LIVER: A FRIEND BESIDE YOU"

RED ALERT

"SAY A FUCK"

"THE RISK OF CURIOSITY"

"THERE IS ALWAYS SOMETHING TO LEARN"

"EVERYTHING YOU HAVEN’T LEARNED"

COMIC ARTWORKS

“DON'T WORRY SON, WE ARE IN GOOD HANDS“

"AND THEY WERE TEARS OF JOY, THEN SILENCE"

"10 OUT OF 10 SERVICE"

"WALL-EYE

PASSIONS

There are those who burn with passion. Those who need the heat of others to see their own flame to rise. Who tries to put out the fire and who instead blesses its spreading. As a mysterious living fire, the human personality burn melting everything, merging with everything, radically changing everything it touches.

FUTURE

"THINGS OF ANOTHER WORLD"

"GHE D’AVEG PAGÜRA"

"WHAT ARE YOU DOING?"

THE GAME OF OLDER

THE BEAUTY IS ALSO IN YOU

Often we look so far to search beauty. This blessed curiosity is useful for giving ourselves new spurs, objectives and directions, but it happens that we allow ourselves to be absorbed by this condition, forgetting how much each of us already has a universe of beauty within himself.

BROAD-MINDED - BACK TO SQUARE ONE

“Silent slow prejudice, born of error and of the experience of life, leads the individual away from his pure condition to a shrunken reality, corrupting the full potential of his nature.” This thought is behind this representation of a young girl who is using lemons as blinkers. As they grow, they compromise her pure, untouched perception of the world. The feet on the head serve as a warning, as opposed to the main concept of the artwork, representing the heavy burden that characterizes becoming too closed-minded. They also represent the will to take on new challenges, withstanding the human tendency to dullness.

TAKING THE PISS

This work comes from a vague and occasional perception of being in a great "The Truman Show". Relations, objectives, ideas that are shaped on individual living, often leaving out any type of identity and ideal, all in favor of a non-comparison with others, and perhaps even with oneself. It's said that to succeed in life it's necessary to have a face like the backside but, in this way more than incomprehensible sounds, you cannot express yourself.

EVERYTHING YOU HAVEN’T LEARNED

Everything that is not learned is a missed opportunity that precludes a wider vision on the world. Leaving out and postponing too many things can be dangerous.

LIFE STORIES

Amongst the many different and distant faces that speak of stories, thoughts and experiences, there’s one thread of passion, desire and dream that arises from the whirlwind of thoughts of the younger ones, making his way through the chaos of life. Threatened and twisted by the circumstances, this thread unites all the realities that walk the path of life going after it.

SCHRODINGER’S CAT

Schrödinger's Cat is a really interesting theory that questions everything we call reality. This is a personal representation, less grim but equally emblematic, where the bivalence of reality is represented by the slices of bread: at one time, one is cooked while the other is raw.

ONE HAND WASHES THE OTHER

It seems like never has hygiene been rediscovered as in this time, especially that one of the hands. This input gave birth to the current representation of the concept: "one hand washes the other" where the main emotions of our days are contained.

YOU KNOW LIKE .. WHEN YOU THINK YOU GOT IT ALL?

This is what happens when you are in a condition of Gnosis of the world, things, traditions, of the mysteries that surround us. Instead, we find ourselves walking on a wet floor, ready to slip on our own certainties.

A LOOK INTO THE FUTURE. BALANCE BETWEEN NATURE AND PROGRESS

Never as when you are so close to losing something, you appreciate its nature and essence the most. This also happens also to the precarious balance between nature and progress that perhaps never before have we seen so threatened. Currently our look into the future doesn’t really look bright (Shame and shyness).

RELAX

The glorification of resting on the most informal object there is: the sofa. This common moment of lightheartedness that often leads to aperitifs and games needed a celebration.

LONG WAITS

How long could a wait be before its fruit is ready to be lived? There is never the certainty of the moment in which the fulfillment of an experience has been reached. Just like when a jar of pickles is opened, who can say if having waited one more day would have given it more flavor?

There Is Always Something To Learn

“It’s clear that, when ages pass over, a person let its experience grow and usually, also personal limits grows with it. When the point of view over constant changing things, became so close and static, life start to slap the soul who wan’t to see anything change”.
It’s this the core of the artwork where the main subject, desperately grabbed to the police’s signaling disk (which represent personal limits) have an upset expression for trouble to receive some slap.

THE MAN AND THE MEANING OF THE HOLE

Whatever the origin, the story or the aim, it seems that the deeply connected whole encloses humanity and its being in an overflowing and incomprehensible narrow hole. Who knows whether the difficult success in escaping will be able to offer mankind an opportunity to change its condition of "limited" or whether it will take a further introspective journey to change its point of view and its concept of life.

THE BALANCE OF THE MUSSEL

This work shows the artist’s thoughts on the concept expressed by Giovanni Verga in his novel “The House by the Medlar-tree”: every social strata remains anchored to its origin regardless of the efforts that are invested to make a quality leap. Pretending to be someone you are not is indeed never enough. A mussel remains a mussel, an oyster remains an oyster (albeit with the fear of going bad).

THE WEIGHT OF RESPONSIBILITIES

In the walk of life we often find company, some good soul to share the hard work of everyday life with, with whom you would like to share everything. Equally often, the game of responsibility makes you lose the perception of this pleasure that results in a feeling of heaviness and loneliness.

THE NEST

A small peaceful space away from the whirlwind of the world; this is the nest on which we build our dreams and desires. Nothing however is exempt from the condition of uncertainty that shakes the foundations of every life, always poised between the flight and the abyss.

EVERYTHING PASSES

This works represents the relationship of mankind with its spirituality. A constant quest that sees its foundations corrupted, not allowing to find the answers and the hoped-for relief even to the most zealous souls; that comfort that was in childhood.

CONNECTIONS

This work represents the importance of encounters, of life experiences that autonomously unfold along the path of life, influencing and crossing each other in an apparently meaningless dance that gives rise to every personal singularity.

CREATIVE FLOW

Main character of the composition is The David. Symbol of perfection and creative beauty from which a dense wave of thoughts and apparently dissonant elements spring. These represent the chaos of creative thinking, a guideline that allows the artist to put everything in its place, thus reaching the fruit of his thinking.

COMMON THINKING

The obsession of a mass movement towards something creates overall impulsiveness. Thus is generated the common thinking that depersonalizes souls and merges the most into a engulfing mass.

CHANGES ALWAYS TAKE ABACK

Very complicated is to decipher tomorrow even though it’s already present, for the sole consideration that existence Is. Despite all this, changes that will arise from the future arouse anguish and fear conveying a cryptic sense of emptiness to merge ourselves in, seeking our own path.

WERE WE BETTER OFF WHEN THINGS WERE WORSE?

No one could ever possibly answer the question as the human experience in univocal and impossible to communicate. The risk of loosing ourselves in the wonderful progress of things is certain, settling for a vain feeling of supremacy towards a past that, with its humbleness, has offered the possibility of existing in the future.

IN DENIAL OF THE PASSING OF TIME

How do you not think, how do you not bother the flowing of life? At first glance it all seems so confusing yet well defined. Everything moves in one direction, good and bad things, among the ceaseless waves that for a long time to come will keep producing their roar in the universe.