Antonio Sorrentino is an Italian visual artist whose abstract works explore the fertile terrain between presence and absence, memory and emergence. His practice is distinguished by a sophisticated dialogue between visual art and semiotic reflection.
»beim Betrachten von Antonios Arbeiten hat man immer das Gefühl, dass alle inneren Gedanken, Empfindungen, Emotionen und Gefühle den Körper verlassen und sich in seinen Werken manifestieren. Dies geschieht auf eine Art die jeder für sich selbst sofort nachvollziehen kann.«
When viewing Antonio's works, one always has the feeling that all inner thoughts, sensations, emotions and feelings leave the body and manifest themselves in his works. This happens in a way that everyone can immediately understand for themselves.
— Collezionista privato (Austria)
The Abstract Work
At the core of Sorrentino's research lies the investigation of how forms emerge and withdraw within the pictorial field. Working primarily with acrylic on grey ground, he creates paintings where the image is never fully stabilized. Rather than describing the body, he evokes it through white lines, chromatic cavities and fragments of gesture that suggest a form in the process of becoming.
The Children Cycle
The Children Cycle represents a pivotal moment in Sorrentino's exploration of presence through absence. In these works, the child figure emerges as a partial imprint — suspended between memory, appearance and dissolution. The grey ground functions as a deposit and space of memory, while reds, yellows and blacks interrupt this surface with impulses that render the figure unstable, vulnerable and intermittent.
The Metaphors Phase
Within the artist's trajectory, the Metaphors phase marks a decisive passage. Here painting takes on an allegorical function: the canvas becomes a space where recognizable images and symbols construct complex ideas such as time, deception, passion and desire. This figurative season is not separate from the later research, but forms its threshold: what will later become trace, absence and appearance is still presented here as emblem, narrative and symbolic construction.
The Metaphors section gathers works in which painting builds meaning through symbolic images, visual allegories and strongly evocative figures. In these works, the canvas does not merely represent a subject; it stages a concept: time, deception, passion, desire and their ambiguities are translated into images dense with signs, juxtapositions and symbolic shifts. This research precedes or accompanies the development of the abstract works and helps clarify some of their deeper roots.
Semiotic Reflection
Sorrentino's work engages deeply with semiotic thought, particularly the traditions associated with A.J. Greimas and Umberto Eco. His paintings operate as visual texts where emptiness is not mere lack but a generative device of meaning. This approach finds an echo in the casts of Pompeii — those hollow forms created by the volcanic ash that preserved the absence of bodies, making presence perceptible through its very lack.
Like the Pompeian casts, Sorrentino's paintings make visible the process of emergence itself. What matters is not the completed image, but the tension between appearance and restraint — the trace that marks both presence and its inevitable dissipation.
Artistic Collections
Sorrentino's work is organized into distinct collections that trace his artistic evolution. The Abstracts represent his most original research, where the investigation of presence and absence reaches its fullest expression. The Metaphors gather figurative and allegorical works exploring time, deception, passion and desire. The Various Works gather landscapes, portraits, masterwork studies and light explorations, while the Drawings explore mark-making and synthesis as autonomous practices.
Technique and Materiality
The material choice of acrylic on grey ground is fundamental to Sorrentino's poetics. The grey functions as a neutral field — a space of potential where memory can deposit itself. Against this ground, the artist deploys white lines not as contours but as forces that hold and release form. The result is a painting that exists in a state of perpetual tension, always becoming, never fully arrived.