Fabio Mingarelli, known in art circles as “Ming,” was born in Faenza, a town world famous for its ceramic craftsmanship located in the province of Emilia-Romagna in Northern Italy. He then moved to Avellino, in Southern Italy, where is mother, Gabriella Rivalta, a well-known artist and ceramist who also teaches ceramic decoration at the School of Art, became a driving force behind Ming’s work.
He fondly remembers first unlocking the secrets of the ancient art of the fire and design.
“I was so small when my mother first took me into the workshop and after the kisses, the caresses and the pinching on the cheeks from her colleagues, they pretty much let me do what I wanted to…I was almost invisible there… and it was at that precise moment I really started to enjoy myself and discover… I mean, I could touch everything…paints, varnishes, brushes…I could play with the clay…I could get dirty…it was absolutely beautiful!…I really let myself get carried and be carried away. As the years passed, I began to learn the technique and craft as well…that way I could better relish and dive into my personal interpretation of artistic expression. That was the air that I breathed in those years....years of development and experimentation….years of creative elevation and childhood discovery.”
To understand Ming’s art, one has to be able to imagine those formative years in the workshop. Aside from the pottery workshop “Julia Bèla” in Avellino that he operates along with his mother and his wife Pina, Ming has made an impression regarding his pictorial work.
One could consider his work abstract, a complex conjunction of form that merge into a composite of rhythmic colors that are at times pure and sometimes blended underneath endless nuances and veils…and within the painting a watchful eye perceives, or rather guesses…the language of the artist.
Obviously, all of this is not instantaneous and that is exactly his expectation. Ming’s art is like an unknown language that one has to learn little by little, without rush ...then it spreads through you, involves, excites, stimulates.
As an art critic Vietto, from Piedmonte once wrote about him:
“I’ve found his work surprising and and strongly provocative. To begin with, the choice and the combination of the shapes and the colors, is like the construction of an intriguing puzzle of fragmented anatomies, where an obsessed mind like mine or anyone else’s can see and recognize fingers, appendages, sexual organs, penises and breasts with reddish nipples, an awaiting vulva to which everything seems to converge, and other openings and alien anatomies, the whole in moving in a dance over a green field of pleasure and expectation…”
In recent years the artist left behind, temporarily, abstract painting…advised by a colleague… it was causing to him a perhaps excessive internal torment.
The portrait has become now predominant…his recent work is very much “drawn” and as he admits .
“It’s like a therapy to me…being able to see a complete, defined form, makes my heart relax to the point of being so free that I can experiment new expressive forms.”
Thanks to portraiture, the artist has received international acclaim.
Ming however is very reserved and rarely present in social circles. His artwork is exclusively in art galleries or on exhibit in private functions and charity-related events. Ming is also a certified physical therapist and works closely with patients suffering from physical disorders and injuries.
His exhibits are generally abroad, where his personal attendance is not required. In 2005 and 2006 he took part in exhibits held in London, Florence and Tokyo.
In November 2007 his work received positive reviews by Italian art critic and intellectual, Vittorio Sgarbi.
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