Biography
Giandomenico Soranno trained at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Venezia, where he graduated with honours in sculpture, earning an academic diploma. His research grows out of a constant dialogue with material, understood as the meeting point between gesture, thought and memory. In Soranno's work, material is never a mere means: it is an interlocutor. He often turns to materials such as wood, clay and plaster, valued for their immediacy and their capacity to retain the artist's gesture, while also finding in stone and resins the right tools when a project requires them. This preference is not a technical constraint but a choice, born of a desire to establish relationships: wood can evoke natural rhythm and the seascape; clay and plaster allow rapid testing and variation; stone demands measure and silence. Rather than accumulating materials, Soranno sets them in relation to one another, seeks correspondences of weight, surface and memory, and lets them converse until a shared meaning emerges.
His method combines study and workshop practice. Design stages begin with sketches, small casts and material tests; many of these solutions are then developed into series or modules that respond to one another. It is common for several elements to build a single argument: panels that complete one another, groups of sculptures conceived as sections of the same idea. He is interested in the tensions between continuity and discontinuity, between what presents itself to the immediate gaze and what remains suspended, awaiting recognition.
In 2025, Soranno won the Premio Strega BPER Art with "Essenza", a work created in dialogue with the theme set by the competition. The piece reflects on the value of culture as a human bond and on the power of transmission between people and generations. Three hands clasped with intensity become an image of encounter and sharing, from which a dark pour emerges, evoking ink: a symbol of knowledge spreading, like a vital fluid that runs through matter and unites it. In this visual and conceptual synthesis lies the deeper sense of his research, always oriented towards transforming material into relationship and gesture into language.
Alongside his studies, Soranno steadily pursues his own artistic practice, successfully reconciling work, research and the production of his pieces. He is driven by a deep motivation, linked to the desire to continue studying and, in the future, to pass on his experience in the field of sculpture.
Soranno regularly takes part in exhibitions and competitions, including Art Night Venezia, Premio Mestre and Premio Nocivelli. He studies and works with persistence, pursuing a research practice that interweaves material and thought, gesture and meaning, in an effort to make sculpture a language of relationship.
His method combines study and workshop practice. Design stages begin with sketches, small casts and material tests; many of these solutions are then developed into series or modules that respond to one another. It is common for several elements to build a single argument: panels that complete one another, groups of sculptures conceived as sections of the same idea. He is interested in the tensions between continuity and discontinuity, between what presents itself to the immediate gaze and what remains suspended, awaiting recognition.
In 2025, Soranno won the Premio Strega BPER Art with "Essenza", a work created in dialogue with the theme set by the competition. The piece reflects on the value of culture as a human bond and on the power of transmission between people and generations. Three hands clasped with intensity become an image of encounter and sharing, from which a dark pour emerges, evoking ink: a symbol of knowledge spreading, like a vital fluid that runs through matter and unites it. In this visual and conceptual synthesis lies the deeper sense of his research, always oriented towards transforming material into relationship and gesture into language.
Alongside his studies, Soranno steadily pursues his own artistic practice, successfully reconciling work, research and the production of his pieces. He is driven by a deep motivation, linked to the desire to continue studying and, in the future, to pass on his experience in the field of sculpture.
Soranno regularly takes part in exhibitions and competitions, including Art Night Venezia, Premio Mestre and Premio Nocivelli. He studies and works with persistence, pursuing a research practice that interweaves material and thought, gesture and meaning, in an effort to make sculpture a language of relationship.
Artworks by Giandomenico Soranno
