In an essay on the Lithuanian painter and musician Mikalojus Kostantinas Čiurlionis, the critic Vjačeslàv Ivanov wrote the following: The centrifugal inclinations of solitary artists do not lead them involuntarily into a vacuum, where new worlds of forms could be formed, but into vague solar systems, into the territories of the muses, and invoke ambiguous hybrid forms of creation, which result not in artibus, but inter Artes.1 Marco Cassarà’s pictorial research implicitly feeds on the same suggestions, and in fact moves in the sphere of symbolic abstraction. […]
1 Vjačeslàv Ivànov, “Čiurlionis and the Problem of the Synthesis of the Arts”, on Luca Quattrocchi M.K. Čiurlionis: preludio all’astrattismo, Pendragon Edition, Bologna, 2000.
excerpt from:
Marco Cassarà | I Libri della Trasmigrazione (The Books of Transmigration)
by Giusi Diana
Text for the catalog of the exhibition “Time: Mask and Unmask”, curated by Viviana Vannucci and Moinuddin Khaled, Palazzo Pisani-Revedin, National Pavilion of Bangladesh, 59th International Art Exhibition, La Biennale di Venezia.
Marco Cassarà – Vagus Nerve, 2025, abrasions and oil on galvanized sheets metal, cm 180 X 180. Video: Fausto Brigantino
Marco Cassarà – Vagus Nerve, 2025. Video: Fausto Brigantino
SERIES
“I like to think light is intrinsic to the material of the work, and emerges to the surface through the strokes I carve, like the whiteness of bones emerges from a wound. Bones support us, we feel their shape, they are sculptural lines within us. We identify with them. I imagine how a primitive man experienced the proprioceptive sensation of his skeleton. The association with pain when a bone is uncovered by a deep wound, what might have evoked in him seeing the bones of an animal, or the skeleton of a human being. The association of the pain with death. Projecting all of this on a conceptual level, in that hypothetical wound I imagine a point of conjunction, a breach between the universe and the microcosm of a person. In that spot I like to place the works of Bones of Light.”
excerpt from:
Marco Cassarà | Ascendens (Journal)
Marco Cassarà – Vagus Nerve, 2025, abrasions and oil on galvanized sheets metal, cm 180 X 180. Photo: Fausto Brigantino
Marco Cassarà – Vagus Nerve, 2025. Photo: Fausto Brigantino
PALEOSONIC
2024
abrasions and oil
on galvanized sheets metal
cm 165 x 200
Marco Cassarà – Bones of Light, curated by Giusi Diana
05 april – 01 june 2024
L’Ascensore, Palermo, IT
artistic direction Genuardi Ruta
technical assistans Michele Zingales, Antonio Vassallo, Salvo Ficano
photo Fausto Brigantino graphic C4dmio
Marco Cassarà – Bones Of Light, 2024, exhibition view. Courtesy L’Ascensore. Photo: Fausto Brigantino
Marco Cassarà – Bones Of Light, 2024, exhibition view
BONES OF LIGHT
2024
abrasions and oil
on galvanized sheets metal
installation view
BONES OF LIGHT
2024
limited edition
debossed braille
heavy weight
paper sheets,
print on portfolio paper
Marco Cassarà – I Libri della Trasmigrazione, 2017-2022, installation view. Photo: C4dmio
Marco Cassarà – I Libri della Trasmigrazione, 2017 – 2022
SERIES
I LIBRI DELLA TRASMIGRAZIONE
(THE BOOKS OF TRANSMIGRATION)
[…] Cassarà’s work has always moved in a liminal space, attempting to grasp the unimaginable through physical means. The result, by contrast, is a sign painting in bright colors, which seem to light up from within. This photonic brightness, together with the continuous fluctuation of the sign, gives the works an electronic aura, typical of fluid digital images. In this new series of works the intimate dimension of the book, a form which has always been dear to the artist, acquires solemnity thanks to the larger format which allows for a more immersive aesthetic experience. […] nestled between two ultramarine blue paintings, the phrase “Know thyself” is reported in Braille.
excerpt from:
Marco Cassarà | I Libri della Trasmigrazione (The Books of Transmigration)
by Giusi Diana
Text for the catalog of the exhibition “Time: Mask and Unmask”, curated by Viviana Vannucci and Moinuddin Khaled, Palazzo Pisani-Revedin, National Pavilion of Bangladesh, 59th International Art Exhibition, La Biennale di Venezia.
Marco Cassarà – Nirvana. 2024, capsule collection at Ojda. Photo: C4dmio
Marco Cassarà – Nirvana, 2024
SERIES
NIRVANA
“Nirvana means freedom from pain,
suffering and the external world,
and that’s pretty close to
my definition of Punk”
Kurt Cobain
“Nirvana is therefore a spiritual concept that sounds kind of Grunge. I’ve been working on the paintings of this sequence with the same iridescent spirit; with a pictorial approach somewhat punk, violent, instinctive and immediate, but at the same time contemplative. I conceived it as a single work. Imagining the sound, its shape, its tension, its colour; sometimes quiescent, sometimes rhythmic, as within a mystical composition, or an electric guitar solo”.
excerpt from:
Marco Cassarà | Ascendens (Journal)
NIRVANA
2023
oil on canvas
27 pieces
cm 21 x 29,7
each
Animae, 2024. Exhibition view, Villa Zito, Fondazione Sicilia. Photo: Antonio Vassallo
Animae, 2024, exhibition view, Villa Zito, Fondazione Sicilia
SERIES
THE RISING
“In the works of The Rising, the evocative power of animal skin brings the engraving by means of grinders to a performative level, establishing a tension that results in a transfert between two bodies, or forms, that of the animal and mine “
excerpt from:
I (nerver) Explain (#180) Marco Cassarà. ATP DIARY.
Marco Cassarà – Solar Plexus, 2017, Exhibition view. Courtesy N38E13. Photo: C4dmio
Marco Cassarà – Solar Plexus, 2017
english version follows
Sono l’ologramma nella mia carne,
assieme alla terra
e agli altri pianeti
giro attorno al sole,
col sole e altre stelle
attorno a un buco nero.
Ogni istante,
nell’universo
attraverso vastità
incommensurabili,
eppure, da sempre
sento di essere qua.
I am the hologram in my flesh,
along with the earth
and the other planets
I revolve around the sun,
ALONG with the sun and other stars
around a black hole.
Every moment
in the universe
i traverse immense vastness,
yet, I always
feel I am here