An exhibition of the pioneer of video art Fabrice Plessy opens today in the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts

The exhibition "Fabricio Plessi: The Soul of the Stone", where the works of the pioneer of video art in Italy are presented, opens today in the State Museum of Fine Arts named after. A. S. Pushkin.

Specially for the exhibition, the artist created 16 video sculptures, which are in dialogue with works from the collection of the Pushkin Museum. A. S. Pushkin. Also in the exposition is a digital reconstruction of the fresco from the Giants' Hall in Palazzo Te in Italian Mantua.

"For me, the most deafening of his project was connected with St. Mark's Square, when the whole area, all the windows were alternately filled with water that splashed in these windows with Venetian blue light, then the fire that burned in these windows after the water. This is an incredible feeling: when two different elements are in struggle with each other, they surround this area, "says the director of the State Museum of Fine Arts. Pushkin Marina Loshak.

The exhibition, she said, was a logical continuation of the direction "Pushkin XXI", in which the Pushkin Museum. Pushkin holds exhibitions of contemporary art, integrating them into classical expositions.

"I always say that I am such a lonely sailor, a lonely sailor who sails through the raging sea of ​​art, and for many years never in this sea I have not been calm, I have not seen clear weather, it's always high waves and energy sprays," said Plessis at a press show of his exhibition.

But, as the artist said, he always knows exactly where his ship is heading. "The case and necessity made it so that I sailed to Moscow, and not to some simple place, but to the Pushkin Museum," said Plessy.

He admitted that as a child he never dreamed of becoming rich and famous. "I wanted to visit the most important museums in the world, and now, thanks to friends and circumstances, I'm here today." When I visited this museum last year, I wanted to create something dedicated to the sculptures that are kept in this museum, "- the artist shared.

Plessis added that in his work he made a start from the words of Michelangelo, who said that "the sculpture is already inside the marble, and the artist has only to take it out of the stone."

"And being such an artist as I am, those who work with new technologies, I thought that such a video sculpture would be the most correct metaphor for how sculptures are created," explained Plessy. An important task for him was to integrate contemporary art into the classical exposition of the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts. Pushkin, to combine modernity and antiquity together.

The curators of the exhibition were the head of the department of cinema and media arts of the Pushkin Museum. Pushkin Olga Shishko, professor of the history of Russian art and contemporary art at the Ca Foscari University of Venice, director of the Center for the Study of Culture of Russia (CSAR) Silvia Burini, professor Ka Foscari Giuseppe Barbieri.

About the artist

Fabrizio Plessis was born in 1940. He graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Venice. The artist has repeatedly participated in such prestigious exhibitions as the Venice Biennale and Documenta in German Kassel.

Personal exhibitions of Plessis were held at the Guggenheim Museum in New York and Bilbao, Scuderia del Quirinale in Rome, the Martin Gropius House in Berlin, the Valencia Institute of Contemporary Art, the Vienna Museum of Art History and the Joan Miro Foundation in Barcelona. In 2013, near the Alpine Brenner Pass, the Plessis Museum was opened.