Arcangelo Sassolino Explained

Arcangelo Sassolino
Birth Date:	1967
Birth Place:	Montecchio Maggiore, Italy
Occupation:	Sculptor
Nationality:	Italian

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, Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa, 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; Swiss Institute, 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
• 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 Silvia Grandi.

Note

1. Web site: Contemporary Art Museum offers first solo shows for artists to examine human form. Willis Ryder. Arnold. news.stlpublicradio.org.
2. Web site: Arcangelo Sassolino – Vancouver Biennale.
3. Web site: Arcangelo Sassolino makes material speak through existentialist art. Dani. Morpurgo. March 13, 2019. GPS Radar.
4. Web site: Arcangelo Sassolino. February 18, 2013.
5. Web site: Arcangelo Sassolino – Time Tomb | z33. archief.z33.be.
6. Web site: Piccolo animismo.
7. Web site: Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis. Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis.
8. Web site: Mechanism of Power. 2017-12-02. https://web.archive.org/web/20160322102745/http://fkv.de/en/content/arcangelo-sassolino-mechanisms-power. 2016-03-22. dead.
9. Web site: Canto V | Arcangelo Sassolino | 23/09/2016 | San Gimignano. Galleria Continua.
10. Web site: Bevilacqua La Masa | Comune di Venezia.. www.comune.venezia.it.
11. Web site: Guggenheim. www.guggenheim-venice.it.
12. Web site: La scultura italiana del XXI secolo. 2017-12-02. https://web.archive.org/web/20171201031321/http://www.fondazionearnaldopomodoro.it/event/la-scultura-italiana-del-xxi-secolo/. 2017-12-01. dead.
13. Web site: Museum Tinguely – Under Destruction. www.tinguely.ch.
14. Web site: Francis Bacon: mostra d'arte a Firenze ottobre 2012 gennaio 2013 | CCC Strozzina. www.strozzina.org.
15. Web site: The Transported Man. 2017-12-02. https://web.archive.org/web/20180103142659/http://thetransportedman.broadmuseum.msu.edu/?p=the-transported-man. 2018-01-03. dead.
16. Web site: Mostre Archivi.