[1] He is known for his use of materials including: incandescent electric light tubes, steel, pitch, motifs, and processes through the use of evaporation and oxidation.

[2] Zorio originally studied painting, but he soon moved on to sculpture and had his first solo show of three-dimensional works in 1967 at the Galleria Sperone, Turin.

[4] A lot of Zorio's early work tended toward that which the North American artist Robert Morris identified as a 'dedifferentiation' between the materials and forms of art in post minimalist sculptural practice.

This led to Zorio presenting objects that asserted dynamic relationships with their materials and spatial or environmental context.

These works utilized the process of chemical reactions or simple physical actions (such as oxidation, evaporation, refining, or electric transmission).

These events and changes take place within the work occurring at a slow pace, turning the weight and impact of time and the relentless rhythm of nature into something tangible.

[7] Since his first exhibition at the Galleria Sperone in Turin in 1967, Gilberto Zorio's work has been linked to the history of Arte Povera.

Next came his work involving the action and reaction of the artist's body like in Odio ("hate" in Italian), a word inscribed with an ax in a wall.

There Zorio presented Torcia, a radical piece where flaming torches, suspended above the ground, fall causing the collapse and destruction of the work itself.

[8] Later in life, Zorio commented on the beginning of the Arte Povera movement and his role, with the other artists of the Arte Povera movement, that "leaving the box or leaving the framework, acting outside the framework, I don't know whether that was understood as a gesture of liberty, of freedom, whether we were understood as a force saying 'Here we are, we are ready to enter into dialog' I think a lot has to do with perception of the other and what happens around the perception of the other.”[9] Zorio has stated that his belief in art is that “It can’t be masked or disguised, and I think I can say that of the work of so many artists, it can't be masked or hidden or disguised.

And that I think is a very positive fact, I mean you can physically destroy a work of art, you can try and affect its intrinsic strength as a result of the context in which it exists, but I don't think you can actually change it.

"[10] Like many of the artist of the expanded Arte Povera movement, Zorio professed faith in and practiced alchemy.

He describes a canoe as " A javelin of water, it is desire and dream, forward motion, the idea of effort, conquest, new landfalls.

Zorio took a green cloth, which was soaked in salt water, draped it over a metal scaffolding, and clamped it in place.

[17] Zorio commented on this piece saying, “Rubber is a plant material, it becomes very hard with this cement that runs over it and it doesn’t touch the ground, in a terrifying balance, where the air chamber supports the overturned capital pipe.

Germano Celant, an Italian art historian, critic, and curator, commented on this piece saying, "Thus this involves a time system that reacts to the changes that concern it, and its formal equilibrium, in the absence of an optimal or quiet state, is changed by external intervention; to experience the work, the viewer must be present, since it is his or her presence that necessarily transforms the appearance of the work.

Eventually the handle loses its magnetic pull and the iron will start falling back into the sulphur mixture.

[20] Zorio's Senza titolo (untitled) is a piece created out of bamboo branches, bonfire, Pyrex pot, and cement bricks.

This work is intended to be an interactive piece which facilitates the alchemical transformation of spoken language by filtering through alcohol.

Zorio created this series out of many unconventional materials including: wood, leather, javelins, copper sulphate, hydrochloric acid, and alcohol.