Arcangelo Sassolino navigates fragility and transformation with Aux abords du séisme

Galleria Continua presents Aux abords du séisme (On the Verge of the Earthquake), a solo exhibition by Italian artist Arcangelo Sassolino, running from March 20 – May 30, 2026, at the gallery’s Marais location in Paris. The art exhibition brings together works that highlight Sassolino’s long-standing fascination with the physical limits of matter and the forces that transform it. “In pursuing the aim of capturing the transformations of matter, and thereby fixing the present moment in its precarious state of balance, Sassolino’s works arise from mechanical actions capable of altering matter’s condition, bringing to light the very process through which form emerges,” Galleria Continua explains in the press release.

At the entrance, visitors encounter La consistance du vide, a large-scale installation in which a heavy marble block bends a glass surface beneath it. The piece sits in a delicate equilibrium, prone to shattering at the slightest change, embodying the exhibition’s central theme: the instability of form and the ever-present possibility of rupture. “Destruction is never absolute; it is always a passage toward something else. What collapses generates. What burns leaves a trace. What breaks reveals another structure,” the contemporary artist notes in the official release.

His philosophy is realised in Damnatio memoriae. This mechanised installation slowly erodes a marble torso, referencing the ancient Roman practice of erasing individuals from history—“their face was removed from sculptures and reliefs, and their name erased from inscriptions when they were accused of treason or deemed unworthy”, the art gallery explains. Rather than simple destruction, the work raises questions about memory and historical narrative. “The destruction of the sculpture does not simply coincide with its disappearance: the form gradually disperses into space, dissolving back into the material from which it originated. What vanishes is the image, while the matter itself continues to exist in other forms,” Continua explains.

Conflict, a core element of Sassolino’s practice, is further explored in suspended sculptures such as Forêt primaire, Après l’après and Géographies comprimées. Held precariously by clamps, these works appear stable yet threaten to fall at any moment, emphasising the invisible forces—gravity, pressure, tension—that govern both art and the physical world. “These sculptures reveal both the apparent autonomy of the work and the intrinsic force of matter, which, in Sassolino’s practice, seems constantly to seek liberation from the constraints imposed by the artist, submitting instead to the physical forces that govern it,” the contemporary art gallery notes.

In the show, the Italian contemporary artist also challenges material expectations. In Le sédiment de l’action, rigid concrete appears crumpled like paper, while in Le temps plié, glass is bent to its maximum tension, transforming a brittle material into a metaphor for time—fluid but ultimately uncontrollable. One of the most dynamic elements of Aux abords du séisme is Sassolino’s recent use of viscous industrial oil. In rotating sculptures, thick black fluid continuously shifts across a moving surface, forming and dissolving shapes in real time. “Despite the movement of the surface, droplets detach from the main fluid mass, introducing a continuous loss that escapes any attempt at containment and revealing loss itself as a condition of existence,” Continua elaborates.

Aux abords du séisme unfolds within a delicate and perpetually unstable balance, where matter appears constantly on the verge of collapsing into complete dissolution. “Arcangelo Sassolino thus brings the power of gesture and action back to the fore, as forces capable of effecting change, thereby drawing a powerful metaphor between artistic experience and reality,” Galleria Continua states.