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Turning what is not-familiar (un-heimlich) into something familiar (heimlich), cracking the certainties of everyday habits, transforming trivial items in icons. Riello's for 30 years has been working with his distinctive wittines in order to make clear that irony is the right (and very serious) approach to Contemporary Art. His irony knowns how to play with what is taken for granted, underscoring alternative points of view and new perspectives. His work may be naturally associated to Aldo Mondino's one and to younger artists like Erwin Wurm (Austrian) and Martin Kippenberger (German). An artistic attitude with a lot of intellectual transgression and refined taunt. His Ladies Weapons (real military guns decorated like elegant accessories for sophisticated ladies), Tarokki (an array of curious fakes luxury items), Italiani Brava Gente (an art videogame about Italian xenophobic attitude against Albanian people, made in 1997), Ashes to Ashes (the amazing glass urns cointaining the relics of his personal library) are all mirroring the artist relationship with Western Civilization and his paradoxes. Riello has also a defining sense of jest (mot d'esprit) and a particular taste for detournements, someway a kind of British "witticism" perhaps originated through the long time he is used to spend in London.

However Antonio Riello, although playing in the Conceptual Art context, all the time pays all carefully attention about the visual impact of what he makes. His Ex-Voto, military airplanes and rockets painted and decorated like the ceiling of Veneto churches, borrow from Tiepolo family frescos the typical atmosphere of Venetian skyes. Somebody could says his pious missiles seem fit enough to go directly to Heavens where God is in charge.

Riello most recent works keep going between real life and cultural Wonderland: recycling coconut fibers and playing with AlterModern icons he rescues the humble doormate from sloppiness and the banality of domestic routine. Here the traditional place for a coosy cat is occupied by a shit recalling directly the eponymous Piero Manzoni's "canned shit". There the usual "Welcome" is traded with a gorgeous palm, a hommage to the celebrated palms of Mario Schifano. The Terre Rare (Rare Earth Elements) is a group of 17 works that artistically deals with the Periodic table of Mendeleev. Another kind of un-heimlich, a turbulence in the "Natural Order of Things". Finding inside a doormate the language of Chemistry (and its parafernalia of symbols) is of course an aesthetical experience and tantamount a suggestion to merge-and-mix different languages and icons.

Antonio Riello is also a regular contributor about Contemporary Art for the online magazine DAGOSPIA www.dagospia.com

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Antonio Riello is an eclectic and visionary artist, interested in techniques as varied as painting, sculpture, design, photography, installation and video-games.

He is committed to “explore” artistically the most topical and controversial issues of contemporary Western society, and he thinks ambivalence is the “symbolic form” of our present time: a controlled and various degree of ambiguity (mixed with sarcasm) is the significant and main element of his research.

In 1996 he created the work ITALIANI BRAVA GENTE (a playable videogame totally conceived and made by the artist) about the surging of racism and xenophobia in the "Bel Paese", this artwork has had at the beginning a very harsh welcome by most of Italian media because it was (wrongly) considered "a stain" in the national reputation. In 2022 it has been achieved by the collection of digital artworks of the Bibliothèque Nationale de France.

His work has been exhibited at:

BIENAL DE CURITIBA, (Curitiba BR)
BALTIC (Gateshead UK)

NGBK (Berlin D)

NEUHAUSEN KUNSTVEREIN (Neuhausen D)

MART (Rovereto I)

MUSEE D’ART SAINT ETIENNE (Saint Etienne F)

KUNSTHALLE WIEN (Vienna A)

FONDAZIONE ARNALDO POMODORO (Milano I)

PAC (Milano I)

PALAZZO DELLE PAPESSE (Siena I)

NEUE GALERIE (Graz A)

WOLFSBURG KUNSTVEREIN (Wolfsburg D)