Arcangelo Sassolino: Present Tense

The exhibition brings together a series of new, previously unseen works exploring matter in constant transformation—an attempt to grasp a present moment in perpetual flux. Industrial oil, a central element in the show, becomes both liquid sculpture and a metaphor for the instability of time and space: a dense, opaque fluid that moves, expands and contracts in a continuous dialogue between control and unpredictability.

Sassolino’s practice sits at the intersection of art and physics, with a focus on mechanics and technology. Over a 35-year career, he has exhibited in major international institutions, including the Palais de Tokyo, the Accademia di Francia in Rome, the Peggy Guggenheim Collection, and MART. His 2022 Venice Biennale installation “Diplomazia Astuta”, created for the Malta Pavilion, is regarded as one of the most impactful recent national presentations. He was also the only Italian artist invited to the Islamic Art Biennale in Jeddah, where he presented the site-specific work “Memory of Becoming”.

Sassolino sees “conflict” as central to his artistic language. His work incorporates industrial materials and mechanical processes that embody tension, unpredictability and fragility. For him, sculpture is an autonomous and unpredictable process, shaped by interaction between materials, forces and emotion. By challenging boundaries between technology and nature, Sassolino seeks to liberate materials from fixed form and transform them into time. “For me, art is about shaping the future. Every artist must reinvent themselves, able to let go of what they’ve just created to make space for the new.”