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Paolo Grassino




Artist 286

Paolo Grassino

The moment of encounter

Installation Art


Paolo Grassino (born 1967) is in Italian installation artist who creates sculptures. Grassino works with mediums of synthetic rubber, wood, wax and polystyrene, in addition to more advanced techniques like fusing aluminum and cement castings, Grassino brings his installations to life through his detailed sculptures.



Through his works, the artist offers a thought on modern society, suspended on the edge between natural and artificial.



Grassino's work aims to be a reflection of society, and how it is suspended on a fence between the natural and the artificial. He explores a space between insecurity and mutation. The works express the condition of existence and interpret the ghosts of history. His creations are not an emphasis of the human form or beast form but the interaction between the two and the interaction and participation that the audience provides.



‘For me, they have a meaning only if they encounter or clash with an object, with a foreign body. The dialogue between the human or animal figure and the object, the artefact, creates a sort of narrative. It's not a research into the body. What interests me most is the moment of the encounter. The first glance of two foreign parts that through their encounter become a single and inseparable body.’ - Paolo Grassino.


Grassino takes great pride in his use of material in sculpture, ‘The material doesn't forgive. Like the sea, like the mountain. If you make a mistake you've had it. In sculpture you cannot pretend, you constantly risk being decorative.’



Explaining the symbolic meaning in his use of material he goes on to say, ‘I look for an understanding. I ask some questions to the material or to the object. I receive some answers that obviously cannot always be translated into words. These answers are words or other images, sometimes illogical. The difficulty is precisely this: to leave the illogical reveal itself, thus respecting and maintaining what is not clear.’



Grassino use sculpture as a starting point to use to move on to installation projects. These are often large-scale works.



Paolo Grassino says, ‘I don't really consider myself as a sculptor. Also when I make some figures in cast aluminium, which might recall the sculptural tradition, I always conceive them as installations linked to the context.



Sharing the making of large scale installation projects with many people, involving buildings or stretches of road, removes the idea that the work belongs to the artist. Looking at these interventions I sometimes feel more a spectator than an artist…’



Sources Consulted


https://www.artspace.com/artist/paolo-grassino

https://www.eduardosecci.com/artist-text.php?id=TR0000012

https://www.artland.com/artists/paolo-grassino

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