The exhibition of Fabrizio Plessi, “Monumenta” is held in the fascinating setting of the Archeological and Landscape Park of the Temples Valley in Agrigento, Sicily.

Ideated by Lorenzo Zichichi and Stefano Contini and organized by The Swan GG Editions Publishing House, the Archeological and Landscape Park and the Contini Gallery of Art in Venice, with the participation of “The Places of Arcadia” the exhibition has been realized thanks to the patronage of the Rome- Mediterranean Foundation and by contributions from Sig Solar Italy, Class Editors and the insurance company Reale Mutua.

An artist of international fame, Fabrizio Plessi presents a pathway of video-installations that have been created for the beautiful archeological area of the Valley of Temples in Agrigento, one of most representative remains from the classical Greek civilization. The artist has projected a series of large monoliths architecturally inspired by the archeological ruins of Agrigento, particularly the altar of the catacombs still visible near the temple of Zeus.

Inside these primordial monoliths scattered around the valley as if fallen from the skies, there is a hidden cavity with a virtual soul. Internally, these atavistic containers are reinforced by 12 prototypical virtual projections of elements 1utilized by artist such as water, rain, fire, lava, wind and lightening.

Conceptually, Plessi embraces the philosophy of Empedocles, Agrigentian philosopher revered as a prophet and who in the same manner as Parmenides and Plato, asserted that the world is made of four fundamental elements: fire water, earth and air; the same primordial elements that are fulcrum of the artistic thoughts of Plessi and of his poetics, centered on respect for the environment and aspiring to create an equilibrium between Man and nature.

The remains of antique classic civilization is therefore fused with monumental installations of an enormous emotional impact and at the same time technological, giving rise to a monument within a monument. The artistic work renders the dialogue between present and past even more seductive, leading us to another matter – that which is unexplored and apparently far removed, between art and the modern world of renewable energy. Plessi’s digital installations in fact, thanks to the collaboration with SiG Solar Italy, are self-powered by a futuristic photovoltaic system with zero impact to the environment, never before utilized in the field of art.

The photovoltaic panels are placed at the summit of the monolith, transforming external energy from the sun into a virtual image; the digital soul of the artist. Art is then eco-sustainable thanks to renewable energy and contemporaneously an artist such as Fabrizio Plessi, who has always experimented with the potentiality of technology during his artistic career, is capable of humanizing the technology of change.

Fabrizio Plessi was born in 1940 in the Emilia Romagna region of Northern Italy. He completed his studies at the Artistic Lyceum and at the Academy of Fine Arts in Venice where he later became Chairman of the Painting Department. In 1968 he became enthused with subject of water, a central point of his artistic work that extends to installations, films, videotapes and performances.

In 1970 and in 1972 his work was exhibited at the Experimental Pavilion of the Venice Biennale. In the 1980s he began to experiment with half-videos focusing his studies on illusionistic concepts between the representation and reality of a liquid element amplifying technological possibilities of mechanical and electronic reproduction to the extreme.

In 1985 Plessi presented his first complete anthological exhibition in Italy at the Rotonda in Via Bresana, Milan, that could be considered absolutely the first showing of video-installations in this country. During the 1980s he began to acquire artistic notoriety at an international level and from here on he began to exhibit in many of the most prestigious places in the world – The Pompidou Center in Paris, The Spanish Museum of Contemporary Art in Madrid, The Kuntsverein (Art Association) in Cologne, the Nagoya Biennale in Tokyo, the Juan Miró Museum in Barcelona, the Kunsthistorisches (Art History Museum) in Vienna, The Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Quirinal Stables Palace in Rome, the Sony Building in Berlin, the Kistefos Museum in Norway and The Guggenheim Collection in Venice, just to name a few. In the past years his field of artistic studies has brought him closer to Venice, a city where water – a central theme of his work – plays a dominant role. In 2005 he created a new version of Mare Vertical (Vertical Sea) exhibited at the entrance to the Biennale Gardens (Giardini); a steel cylinder emerging from the waters of the lagoon to a height of 44 meters, inside of which ran digital water. It would become the symbol of that same Biennale.

In 2011, he was once again invited to participate in the 54th Venice Biennale of Art. The exhibition held in the Venice Pavilion was entirely dedicated to the artist after an accurate and solid renovation of the building by Arzanà Navi and the Louis Vuitton Foundation, returning it in splendor to the city of Venice. The Marivertivali exhibition is a new version of his digital fleet that develops within the semi-circle structure of the pavilion in a symbiotic manner, filling the area with a wonderful concert of water in a continuous flow of motion. In this same year Plessi completed the project LLaut Light in Palma di Mallorca.

Fabrizio Plessi currently lives and works in Venice, Italy and Mallorca, Spain.

Archeological and Landscape Park of the Temples Valley
Strada Panoramica dei Templi
Agrigento 92100 Italy
Tel. +39 0922 621611
parcodeitempli@regione.sicilia.it
www.parcodeitempli.net