BOLOGNA ACADEMY OF FINE ARTS – ANGELO MASSARO

Angelo Massaro utilizes natural materials; he has already shown this with the spectacular installation held at the Basilica of Santo Stefano in Bologna, during Art Fair 2009, in which he adopted grape must as a primary substance, positioning a sort of meteorite that forcefully ploughed horizontally up through the vertical space of the building.

For this event he proposes, with subtle cruelty, a caterpillar type vehicle entirely constructed of the basic nutritive element, common to all peoples and to the whole geographical history of humanity: bread. We know well that in recent years, cereals and basic nutritive substances have been quoted on the stock market through international holdings; from this comes speculation, not to mention also the surplus value and finally the survival of the entire planet, its practical effect coincides with the advent of each one for himself, everyone against everyone else.

Food plus economy plus economic war; this is not just a simplistic historical account, but rather a rational glance towards the present. The sculpture, therefore, is not peaceful, in it there is a turbulence of disconnected surfaces, since sculpture is not contemplation. This sculpture bites the base in its impossibility of movement. The work, with acute strategy, unites a double valence; that of violent incursion and that of the defence of a cornerstone which is under siege.
In conclusion, through the use of concrete materials, Angelo Massaro sets a further shift forward in comparison with previous neo-avant-garde concepts. In his case, the perception of nature is never inert; it only wants to be the mimetic construction of objects and happenings in the metaphoric sign of a social contemporaneity.  

Text by Giovanni Mundula