Massimo Bartolini was born in 1962 in Cecina, Italy, where he continues to live and work. The essential elements of Bartolini’s work are space, time and atmosphere. He uses various materials and techniques, from sculpture and performance to photography. Bartolini’s evocative spaces and anti-monumental sculptures defy viewers’ expectations, allowing for spatio-temporal encounters of the work that are attuned to individual biometric rhythms, rather than eliciting socially conditioned responses. His installations provoke strong physical experiences that evolve a physical awareness, stimulating viewers’ imaginative capacity rather their active participation. Bartolini believes that “art speaks privately to the public: the perfect opposite, that is, of what various disciplines (certainly cinema, certainly TV) do, speaking publicly to the private individual.” Recent work includes a series of drawings, which Bartolini created by lightly tracing the creases left in an unfolded piece of paper. These drawings evoke the memory of an object undone, of an action flattened out, which becomes recomposed in the mind’s eye.

Massimo Bartolini has had solo exhibitions at IKON Gallery, Birmingham, UK (2007), Museu Serralves, Porto (2007) and GAM - Galleria Civica d'Arte moderna e Contemporanea, Turin (2005) in Italy. Recently, his work was shown as part of Mediterranee, Carre d'Art at the Musee d'Art Contemporain de Nimes, Nimes (2007), Resonance at Frith Street Gallery, London (2006), the 2006 Shanghai Biennale and Art 37 Basel, Art in Public Space, Basel (2006). His work was notably included in Manifesta 4, Frankfurt (2002) and dAPERTutto curated by Harold Szeeman for the 48th Venice Biennale (1999).

Massimo Bartolini works with Frith Street Gallery in London, as well as Gallery Massimo de Carlo in Milan and Vistamare in Pescara, Italy.