Digital Fall - A new work by Fabrizio Plessi at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection
From June 9, Digital Fall, a new video and audio work by Fabrizio Plessi is on view in the garden of the Peggy Guggenheim Collection. The work, that will be presented to the press on Saturday June 14, 9.00 am, was created especially for the Museum and from July 2003 will welcome visitors in the museum’s new entrance court at 704 Dorsoduro. The sculpture is currently on view in the museum’s sculpture garden. Digital Fall is being donated to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation by the artist and by Stahlbau Pichler, which has also made possible the construction of the work.
Digital Fall is one of Plessi’s most technical sophisticated sculptures, being equipped with its own micro-climate control system. Constructed of weathered Cor-ten steel, LED displays and sound, the work derives form the artist’s monumental Waterfire installation, shown in Piazza San Marco at the Museo Correr, Venice, during the 49th Venice Biennale in 2001.
Digital Fall is a virtual, electronic waterfall on a large LED color display. The impression of falling water is emphasized by sound effects. The screen is surrounded by a rectangular metal construction, described by the artist as “barbaric minimalism”.
Fabrizio Plessi, one of Europe’s most influential video artists, combines a fascination with materiality, stemming from the tradition of conceptual art and Italian Arte Povera, with his concern for video, experimental media and site-specific installation. Trained as a painter, the artist began adding moving images to his work in the 1960s. All of Plessi’s monumental and baroque installations capture forces of nature such as fire and water, as in Digital Fall, and juxtapose with them elements from the world of construction in order to challenge and question our ideas, history, memory and notion of landscape, both natural and constructed.
Nearly all of his work deals with one of the major themes of art, although from different perspectives – the relationship between reality and illusion, between appearance and reality, and between reality and fiction. At a time when the artistic vanguard proclaimed that art and life should be the same thing, Plessi saw the need for a balance between appearance and reality. He takes fiction to an extreme, but stops at the point where illusion becomes reality.
Plessi was born in Reggio Emilia in 1940, and completed his studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Venice. Participating in Documenta 8 (1987) in Kassel with his monumental installation Roma he achieved international acclaim. His work has been shown extensively throughout Europe, including exhibitions at the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris (1982); Museo Espanol de Arte Contemporaneo, Madrid (1988); the Museum Ludwig, Cologne (1993) and at the Guggenheim Bilbao (2001). In 1998 retrospectives were held at the Guggenheim Museum, New York and the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego. Plessi has participated in the Venice Biennale several times, introducing video art to this exhibition in 1986 with his work Bronx. After having taught for many years as Professor of Humanisation of Technology at the Kunsthochschule für Medien in Cologne, Fabrizio Plessi now lives and works in Venice and Mallorca. He is planning for a retrospective in 2004 at the Gropius Bau in Berlin on the occasion of the Berlinale.
Insititutional Patrons: Banca del Gottardo, Ras, Regione Veneto
The programs of the Peggy Guggenheim Collection are made possible by the Peggy Guggenheim Collection Advisory Board and Intrapresæ Collezione Guggenheim.