The installation was scenographically designed for the hall of the medieval seat of the city and proposes six huge technology portalsEach of these installations visually explains the most characteristic themes of his research, linked to natural elements such as water, lightning, fire, lava, gold, smoke. The monumental arches designed for Como generate a flow of images and sounds that tell of space-time events, such as the water that pours and flows, the lightning that tears the black sky and explodes, the fire that crackles and rises, the lava that heats up and explodes, the gold that flows and melts into the black of the Vanitas, the smoke that thins out and shows a glimpse of the Prisons by Giovanni Battista Piranesi.
An event that promotes solidarity in the area
On the occasion of each new review, The COMO ARTE Foundation promotes a solidarity project, with the aim of conveying a message of particular care and attention towards others; for ALL-PLEXI, the Foundation worked in agreement with the two hospitals in the area: in particular, free entrance tickets to the exhibition will be donated to the Valduce Hospital for people who are undergoing oncology treatment; just as it will be possible to access the exhibition free of charge to all new parents in the obstetrics-nursery department. In collaboration with the Sant'Anna hospital company, free entrance tickets will be donated to the Tullio Cairoli Association, which operates within the oncology department of the same hospital.
Fabrizio Plessi was born in Reggio Emilia in 1940. He lives and works in Venice.
He is one of the pioneers of video art in the world and among the first to have used the television monitor as a real material since the Seventies. In the national and international context, he has participated in countless important exhibitions such as the Venice Biennale, Documenta in Kassel and personal exhibitions held in various museums around the world: from the Centre Pompidou in Paris to the Guggenheim in New York and Bilbao, from the Museo Civico in Reggio Emilia to the Scuderie del Quirinale in Rome, from the Martin Gropius Bau in Berlin to the IVAM in Valencia, from the MoCA in San Diego to the Ludwig Museum in Budapest and Koblenz, from the Kestner-Gesellschaft in Hannover to the Museum of Modern Art in Mallorca, from the Kunsthistorisches in Vienna to the Mirò Foundation in Barcelona or the Fondaco dei Tedeschi in Venice. He taught “Humanization of Technologies” and “Electronic Scenography” for ten years at the Kunsthochschule für Medien in Cologne.
“Drawing coal, straw, marble, iron, earth – remembers Fabrizio Plessi -, becomes a means to approach and fully understand the ancestral physicality of these materials, always and in any case represented in contact or in comparison with the means in use of technology. From this only apparent "clash" of such different substances, from these "impossible coexistences" between the poverty of the natural and the changing richness of the electronic, from these forced assemblies that then became almost biologically communicating vessels, from all these "different possibilities", over the years multiple, infinite projects have been born, perfectly studied and represented, many of which have not yet been realized".
The exhibition is curated by Paolo Bolpagni and Giovanni Berera with the scientific coordination of Ilaria Bignotti, promoted and organized by Fondazione Como Arte ETS, in collaboration and with the patronage of the Municipality of Como, with the support of Regione Lombardia, ASF Como, Como-Lecco Chamber of Commerce, media partner La Provincia, CiaoComo Radio, Como TV