Name: bassel saadi

I began discovering my sculptural style when I started using metal surfaces in 1999, at first I worked on the concept of the human head and the metal surfaces helped me to move fantastically and develop architectural forms liberated in space. Influenced by Julio Gonzalez and the surface of Matisse and Russian constructivist. In 2003, I received the gold award for sculpture in Syria. However, my work was not acquired at all because I used iron and what is required in the art market is noble materials such as bronze, wood and marble. In fact, in the beginning of 2004, my work will become more extreme; at that point I started trying to convey the influence of american art in the 1930s and 1940s (sculpture and studies of David Smith, movement in the works of Pollock and boxes of Louise Nevelson) to sculpture. After 8 months of paper studies I came up with what I will call the "Boxes", this concept represents: shelter - grave - uterus - prison. Technically, the space was a challenging for I was making sculpture under restricted conditions.I was born in Lebanon and lived the beginnings of the civil war , and the memories of hiding from the bomb shells in the shelters came back with the concept of the Boxes. In Syria we lived under the rule of brutal and ignorant dictatorship, besieged the man and isolated him and here also "Boxes" were expressing psychologically and technically a closed political situation. The Boxes concept is a central case in my artistic career, it is an indirect expression of words we can't say, while at the same time a technical reaction to the vulgar and fake art culture representing life in Syria in a peaceful way. The boxes are in thin iron sheets bending because of the welding temperature and what makes it coherent is a few welding points, which gives a sense of disintegration or workability to collapse. Strong optical construction is matched by the possibility of disintegration of the work at any moment. It is the existential concern experienced by generations under the dictatorship.In 2010, the stage began to paint the sculpture as an entertaining artistic experiment in which I tried to break down the state of personal anxiety. This experiment developed and created colored  sculpture works and collage paintings.In fact, colored  sculptures were made in different and enjoyable ways. The last work of this stage was completed in 2016 in Damascus under the circumstances of the war.Now that I settled in Italy I go back to experimenting with the "Boxes" and discovered good possibilities I had not previously known within this concept