Arcangelo Sassolino: Artists at Art Basel Miami Beach 2007

Swiss gallerist, Nicola von Senger’s stand (N55) has just one work of art and he sits there, watching it like a hawk. Arcangelo Sassolino’s huge, black steel grapple Untitled (Spider), 2007, claws its way around the stand, scoring the concrete and threatening to escape. It is hard to know whether Mr von Senger’s slightly haunted look is part of the performance, but when The Art Newspaper’s film crew came to record his thoughts on the Italian artist’s creation, the dealer would only relax when he had the creature’s remote control safely in his hands. It seems that Sassolino used to be a toy maker until some evil genius entered him and he scaled up and went menacing. Sassolino changed species, became an artist, whose speciality is disconcerting automata. Laura Lee Brown and Steve Wilson of 21c Museum Hotel in Louisville bought the creepy crawly for $75,000.