True secular illuminations are the works of Alfons Borrell, his papers and his paintings. With total humility and with an unusual audacity, Borrell, since the late eighties, has focused his painting techniques on collage and monochrome. With maximum simplification, the fabric is usually divided into two or more rectangular geometric shapes. The appearance of slight tears on the edges of the fragments of glued fabrics or the evidence of the different intensities of the brushstroke on the monochrome surfaces often become the fragile and characteristic signs of his language. The gestural elements, essential in the first stage of his painting, are almost reduced to the minimum expression. Certainly, closer to anti-painting than to technical virtuosity, Borrell has made, in line with Eastern aesthetics, chance and the dialectic between emptiness and fullness the centers of his artistic practice. Now, it is perhaps in the chromatic impact that his unmistakable style is most recognizable. The reds, pinks, oranges, blues, greens, ochres or pure grays of his work betray him as a Mediterranean painter. The debate, dialogue and light that emerge from the color of his paintings, such a clear appearance of the mystical ecstasy of the tragedy of existence, of the serenity of nature in its stillness or of the joy of living, they are a frank invitation to contemplation, reflection, and aesthetic pleasure.

Manuel Guerrero