Fabrizio Plessi. Forsaken time. From antiquity to barocco

Curator: Olga Shishko, Head of the Department of Cinematic and Media Arts.

Fabrizio Plessi is a world-renowned Italian video and media artist, the pioneer of Italian media art, an educator and stage designer. He studied in the Academy of Fine Arts in Venice and took part in a number of Venice biennales, Documenta-8 exhibition in Kassel (1987), various biennales in San Paolo and Cairo. He also designed the Italian pavilion at EXPO-2000.

As a part of the “21st Century Pushkin Museum” initiative launched by the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts Fabrizio Plessi will present two projects – “L’Anima della Pietra” (The Soul of a Stone) and “Rolling Stones” – in which the artist converses with the history and re-interprets it by using modern technologies. Plessi works like an alchemist. He connects the technologies with the classical matter trying to penetrate into the “body of the stone” or intrude the space of a baroque fresco. This is a kind of transitional art that exist between the ages; it has no temporal dimension.

Housed in Halls Nos. 24 and 25, “The Soul of a Stone” project consists of 12 video sculptures exhibited together with the art works from the holdings of Pushkin State Museum. This project was first presented in the 53rd Venice Biennale in a medieval palazzo. Interpretation of an antique stone as a primordial image that later evolved into the genre of individual portrait is a sort of research effort aiming to identify connections between modern artists and historical legacy, the reference points that inspire them to create new projects based on cultural traditions.

The “Rolling Stones” project will be deployed in Hall No. 31. This art works was first exhibited in 2013, at the Hall of Giants, Mantova, painted by Giulio Romano in the 16th century. In the painted vaults the giants in hasty retreat destroy the building and columns that “seem to be falling” into the center of the hall. The visual engagement between the two compositions happens when the massive torrents of water start pouring into Fabrizio Plessi’s art work. Stone is a primary material in this composition. The tables are a symbol of a dialog, an interaction between people, which becomes increasingly jeopardized by consistent social crises.

The digital reproduction of the fresco from the Hall of Giants will be created specifically for the Pushkin State Museum project.

The “21st Century Pushkin Museum” initiative acquaints the viewers with the modern, contemporary art, introduces the most interesting artists, the emerging classics, who use the language of video art, audio art, and performance to make their messages.