Welcome to the world of Andrea Spinelli by Gary Williams

Creativity, some say, is “the ability to see what is there.” Andrea Spinelli personifies that definition.

Seen through his eyes and portrayed by his brush, the common is never mundane and simple things are never plain. Nothing in life is immune to Spinelli’s wry observation and careful craftsmanship. He shows us that meaning and beauty are everywhere.

Variety. Beauty. Intelligence. Humor. Spinelli’s work and world is striking and subtle, but never predictable. Everything is of interest to Spinelli, and he seems to find in almost everything a story worth telling.

Art Toppling Tobacco

http://arttopplingtobacco.com.au

A fancied smoking statue of David by Michelangelo morphs and turns into a cigarette butt. This is the painting I submitted to the above competition. May it help to discourage smoking!

ART & LAW by CALCO’

ART & LAW by CALCO’ legal office and art promoter in Zürich, Switzerland is currently featuring Andrea Spinelli, among other artists, on their website:

http://www.artlaw-calco.com

Artist statement on “Urban Inconceivable”

English:

“Urban inconceivable” means recognizing the good, the fascinating, the aesthetically pleasing. It is made of combinations of urban daring and improbable things, yet real. There are tabernacles and gas stations, old buildings and contemporary chaotic construcions, porn cinemas and old time haberdasheries, road signs, billboards and commercial advertising, graffiti. And the combinations are not only based on composition and color, but also on grammar and semantics. Surprising results are born, now trivially conflicting, now simply complementary, now unintentionally comic, admirably wonderful, and spectacularly paradoxical. “Urban inconceivable” makes much more sense than the opposite “urban conceivable”, meaning that the visual surprises we encounter every day in our cities are beyond our imagination.

Italiano:

Inconcepibile urbano è riconoscere il bello, l’affascinante, la piacevolezza estetica fatta di e provocata da accostamenti urbani ardimentosi e improbabili, ma pur veri. Ecco dunque tabernacoli e distributori di benzina, costruzioni antiche ed edilizia caotica contemporanea, cinema a luci rosse e mercerie d’altri tempi, segnaletica stradale, cartellonistica pubblicitaria e commerciale, scritte murali, altri grafemi urbani. E gli accostamenti non sono solo compositivi e cromatici, ma anche e soprattutto, grammaticali, semantici. Nascono risultati sorprendenti, ora banalmente stridenti, ora semplicemente complementari, ora involontariamente comici, fino a mirabilmente stupefacenti, e spettacolarmente paradossali.

Inconcepibile urbano in questo senso appare molto più del contrario di concepibile urbano, a significare che le sorprese visive che le nostre città, le nostre periferie ogni giorno possono generare ed offrire alla nostra osservazione, sono al di là di ogni nostra immaginazione.

Introduction to the painting machines

“Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto” – I am a man, so nothing in the human world is alien to me. Let me begin with this latin statement by Publio Terenzio Afro to summarize my aptitude on trying things which are in the human capacity.

The man behind the artwork by Drew Knapp

The recent paintings of artist Andrea Spinelli renew my appreciation for the values and sensibilities of the man behind the artwork…

I remember one dark, cold evening several years back, driving with Andrea along the highway leading out of New York and into New Jersey. Construction in the road ahead choked traffic to a crawl. It was the kind of activity which occurs only deep in the night, when the rest of the commuting world is sound asleep, and was characterized by blindingly bright halogen lights, smoke, dust, pounding noise, and a sense of urgency. As we slowed to pass the site, and upon witnessing this unusually hard labor performed for the common good, Andrea commented: “These are true heroes.”