Arcangelo Sassolino offers sculptures of time and transformation in 'Present Tense'

Bringing together a series of never-before-seen works is Present Tense, a solo exhibition by Arcangelo Sassolino, hosted at Galleria Continua’s San Gimignano space. The show continues the Vicenza-based artist's exploration of "matter in constant transformation in an attempt to capture a present that is constantly slipping away," according to the art gallery in Italy.

At the heart of the art exhibition, running from May 3 – September 7, 2025, is industrial oil, "a central element of the works displayed, [where it] becomes liquid sculpture and a metaphor for the constant instability of time and space: a dense, opaque fluid that moves, expands and contracts, engaging in a continuous dialogue between control and unpredictability," as the show's press release states.

Blending art, physics, mechanics and technology, Sassolino has spent over 35 years pushing the limits of sculpture. His work, shown at institutions such as Palais de Tokyo, Accademia di Francia and MART, reflects a fascination with 'conflict'—between materials, between forces, between moments. His 2022 Venice Biennale art installation Diplomazia Astuta, created for the Malta Pavilion, received critical acclaim. He was also the only Italian artist invited to the recent Islamic Arts Biennale in Jeddah, where he presented Memory of Becoming, a monumental site-specific contemporary artwork.

Sassolino views sculptural art not as a finished object, but as a living process. His works challenge permanence, embracing tension, unpredictability and transformation. Using industrial materials and mechanical systems, he captures matter in transition, allowing steel, oil and fluid motion to speak of fragility, boundaries and time itself.

"For some time, I've been working with fluids, synthetic oils derived from petroleum, liquid or semi-liquid materials that have remained stable in this form deep within the earth for millions of years. The very nature of the fluid, what makes it a fluid, is in many ways the negation of fixity, of something set once and for all. (...) What I try to capture is the moment of transformation, the instant when something becomes something else," says the artist.

In the show, oil flows in continuous movement—coalescing, dispersing, reconfiguring. Drops detach, marking the passage of time. The present, elusive and unfixed, reveals itself only as it vanishes. "The works in this exhibition are not simply static objects, but exist in a constant state of becoming, where matter transforms before the viewer's eyes," they add.

"Present Tense thus presents itself as a space of suspension and observation of change, where matter becomes a vehicle for a broader reflection on the ephemeral nature of existence and the eternal challenge of making visible that which, by its very essence, cannot be fixed," as the press release mentions.