The work of Arcangelo Sassolino does not follow the trend toward dematerialization that seems to apply to so much contemporary art. In his hands, material assertively occupies space: The “life of matter” makes itself felt—through noises, metamorphoses, structural tensions, and often-violent movements. Canto V (all works 2016), a sixteen-foot tree trunk, sawed longitudinally into thick beams and suspended in midair, was subjected to extreme pressure from a hydraulic jack that bent it first in one direction and then another. A series of creaking noises, something like the sounds that emerge