Arcangelo Sassolino

Arcangelo Sassolino (born 1967) is an Italian artist known for his sculptures that uses technology.^[1]

Early life[]

Sassolino was born in 1967 in Vicenza, Italy.^[2] He was raised in Trissino, near Vicenza, in the north-east of Italy.^[3] In his 20s, he created a three-dimensional puzzle game recalling the Rubik's Cube, and was hired by Robert Fuhrer and Nextoy, LLC, representatives of Casio Creative Products, for which worked for 6 years in New York, inventing and developing original and innovative toys and games. In 1996 Sassolino went back to Italy, where he worked on marble sculpture in Pietrasanta.

Artistic Path[]

In Sassolino's works the spectators find themselves in front of well known industrial materials, such as stainless steel, glass or concrete. He uses these materials into mechanical/thermodynamical fantastic machines, that make the elements reach their limits: extreme speed, friction, gravity, heat, pressure.

Sassolino's sculptures are inorganic performances in which machines take life, get broken by contrast and conflict of forces, on the verge of a breakdown (which is a fundamental aspect of his work). He works around concepts such caducity, loss, unpredictability, danger, failure.

Solo exhibitions[]

• Superdome, Palais de Tokyo, Paris. 29/5/2008 – 24/8/2008^[4]
• Time Tomb, Z33 House for Contemporary Art], Hasselt. 0/5/2010 – 29/8/2010^[5]
• Piccolo animismo, Macro, Rome. 9/3/2011 – 12/6/2011^[6]
• Not Human, Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, 15/1/2016 – 3/4/2016^[7]
• Mechanism of Power, Frankfurter Kunstverein, Frankfurt. 19/2/2016 – 17/4/2016^[8]
• Canto V, Galleria Continua, San Gimignano. 21/9/ 2016 – 15/1/2017^[9]
• Matter Revealed Repetto Gallery, London. 4/10/2017 – 29/10/2017

Group exhibitions[]

• Materia-Niente, , Venice. 26/4/2001 – 30/6/2001^[10]
• Temi & variazioni^[11]
• La scultura italiana del XXI secolo, Fondazione Arnaldo Pomodoro], Milan. 29/10/2010 – 30/ 1/ 2011^[12]
• Under Destruction, Museum Tinguely, Basel – 15/10/2010 – 23/1/2011; , New York 6/4/2011 – 8/5/2011^[13]
• Art and the City Zürich-West. 9/6/2012 – 23/9/2012
• Francis Bacon e la condizione esistenziale nell'arte contemporanea, CCC Strozzina, Florence – 5/10/2012 – 27/1/2013^[14]
• Follia Continua ! 104 Le Centroquatre, Paris – 21/10/2015 – 21/11/2015
• The Transported Man [Broad Art Museum], East Lansing. 29/4/2017 – 22/10/2017^[15]
• Porto Marghera 100 Doge's Palace, Venice, 4/11/2017 – 28/1/2018^[16]

Bibliography[]

• Gabriele Guercio e Anna Mattirolo (a cura di), Il confine evanescente. Arte italiana 1960–2010, 2010, Electa, pag.188–189
• Francis Bacon e la condizione esistenziale nell’arte contemporanea, exhibit's catalogue by Franziska Nori and Barbara Dawson, Centro di Cultura Contemporanea Strozzina, Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi. October 5, 2012– January 27, 2013
• ART AND THE CITY, A public art project, catalogo della mostra. Zurigo 9 giugno-23 settembre 2012. Curator Christoph Doswald, JRP Ringier Verlag, Zurich.
• A.A.V.V., l’arte del XX secolo. Tendenze della contemporaneità 2000 e oltre, 2010, Skira, pag 270–271
• AAVV, Vitamin 3-D, New Perspectives in Sculpture and Installation. An up-to-the-minute survey of contemporary sculpture and installation featuring 117 artists, Phaidon Editors, 2009, pag 266–267
• Jasper Sharp (edited by), Arcangelo Sassolino, JRP Ringier, 2009. Under Destruction, If nothing can be created, then something must be destroyed, edited by Gianni Jetzer – Chris Sharp, catalogue of the exhibition, Tinguely Museum Basel, Swiss Institute New York, 2010, Published by Distanz.
• Luca Illetterati e Arcangelo Sassolino, 6 words 20 works, Padova University Press, Padova, 2016 ISBN 9788869380556
• Giulia Zandonadi, Il ritmo della materia. Forma e tempo nell'opera di Arcangelo Sassolino, tesi di laurea magistrale, Università Ca' Foscari Venezia, relatore Nico Stringa, correlatore Stefania Portinari, a.a. 2013/2014
• Giulia Plebani, Arcangelo Sassolino. Materiali ai limiti della resistenza, master's degree thesis, University of Bologna, supervisor .

Note[]