Promoted by the Autostrada del Brennero spa, the building designed by the engineer Carlo Costa is the first Italian example of museum space on the motorway and will be a symbol of connection between the Mediterranean world and Central Europe, where, from the end of the First World War to the entry into force of the Schengen Treaty (1 January 1995), the border had instead played a role of separation between the Latin world and the Germanic one.
Not only; the new complex also offers a convention center, a refreshment point, service areas, and represents a formal and functional experimentation, capable of transforming the traditional rest area into a place dedicated to culture.
As stated by Walter Pardatscher, president of Autostrada del Brennero spa, “The Brenner Pass has always represented, within the history of Europe, a place with a strong symbolic value and identity. For this reason, the redevelopment of the former customs area had to necessarily also be an opportunity to give new value to these spaces. And the placement of a museum with the works of Fabrizio Plessi was the real embodiment".
“The challenge that our times impose on us – says Paolo Duiella, CEO of Autostrada del Brennero spa – is not just a technological or efficiency challenge. We need to work a lot on the cultural aspect because the world we are going through requires courageous gestures that are projected into the future. For this reason, by imagining a motorway that is not only safe and smooth, we work for an infrastructure that is a resource for the surrounding territories and a tool for their enhancement. The museum space at the Brenner Pass is part of this philosophy: to make the motorway stopover an opportunity for a fundamental cultural and aesthetic experience”.
Inside, the Plessi Museum will be marked by the presence of the large installation that the artist had created in 2000, on the occasion of the Hanover Expo, designed to celebrate the Euregio, the common project of cross-border collaboration between the regions that made up historic Tyrol. It is a sculpture that combines three compositions representing the provinces of Trento, Bolzano and Innsbruck, conceived as an artificial mountain landscape: an alpine environment to be crossed and experienced technologically from the inside.
Edited by Fabrizio Plessi, the exhibition itinerary collects video installations, sculptures, graphic-pictorial presences. The artist also designed the set-up, designing tables, seats, work benches, corten steel shelves for the occasion.
The expressive figure of the works exhibited at the Museum revolves around the theme of water which, since 1968, has guided many of Fabrizio Plessi's installations, films, videotapes and performances.
This element is capable of triggering highly evocative pictorial visions. As Plessi himself states, “I think that video forms a perfect combination with water: water is a changing, ancient, ancestral, primordial element, video is a contemporary element: both are fluid, unstable. Both give off a blue glow.” The same glow that Plessi was able to encounter in the inventions of Tintoretto and Titian and that he was able to study and appreciate while living in a city of water like Venice.
“The water – continues Plessi – which has now become digital thanks to the magic of new technologies, will continue to flow for eternity, luminescent and alive, able to enrapture and amaze us like the seventeenth-century water of Roman fountains. So the miracle of art keeps repeating itself like a tireless replay of history”.
The Plessi Museum – whose area measures approximately 13.000 mXNUMX, for a length of 55 meters and a width of 30 meters – takes the form of a large glass case topped by a large roof capable of relating the architecture to the surrounding landscape. The large full-height hall (12,90 m) is imagined as a real museum space, while the conference room is destined to become the privileged venue for cultural and institutional meetings concerning the relations between the Italian and Germanic worlds. The relationship with the outside was resolved by Carlo Costa through the arrangement of glass walls which guarantee perfect visual interpenetration between the natural and the artificial elements. The large central basin thus becomes an all-encompassing space made up of sounds and images: a veritable covered square, a modern sensory agora within which the fruition of Fabrizio Plessi's work becomes not only an aesthetic but also a social and ecological.
Fabrizio Plessi:
Fabrizio Plessi was born in Reggio Emilia in 1940. He completed his studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Venice where he taught for many years. Using video as an artistic tool, he has traced an innovative path that has made him famous all over the world. Co-founder of Kunsthochschule fur Medien of Köln he taught Humanization of Technologies and Electronic Scenography, At the Ludwig Museum of Köln his installation is famous BOMBAY-BOMBAY. Participates in 14 editions of the Venice Biennale from 1970 until the last one in 2011 with VERTICAL SEAS at the Venice Pavilion. In Italy he was awarded by the Quadrennial of Rome in 1999. In the same year the Kestner Gesellschaft of Hanover awarded him as artist of the year with the NLB award. In 2002 anthological HEAVEN/HELL at the Scuderie del Quirinale in Rome. He has had over 500 solo exhibitions, from the Center Pompidou in Paris (1982) to the Guggenheim in New York (1998), from the Museum of Contemporary Art in San Diego (1998) to the Guggenheim in Bilbao (2001). He participates in the Documenta VIII in Kassel (1987) with the famous installation ROMA. Anthology at the Martin Gropius Bau in Berlin (2003). Great installation for the Sony Center in Potzsdammer Platz, also in Berlin. He collaborates with the most important museums in Austria such as the Kunshistoriche Museum, the Museum Ludwig and the Neue Galerie in Linz Even emerging countries have a sure point of reference in Plessi, as demonstrated by the inauguration of the new Museum of Contemporary Art in Rabat in 2006, he participates in the Cairo Biennial as an artist of honor in 2001., as well as in those of Sharjah and Gwangiu in Korea in 2000. Since 2008 he has collaborated with the Louis Vuitton group, combining his art with the events of the famous French house, such as the 'America's Cup. Close relations with the industry as demonstrated by its links with BMW, Dornbracht, Loewe, Swarovski, Calvin Klein. Intellectuals and musicians such as Robert Wilson, Philip Glass and Michael Nyman worked with him. Unforgettable are his electronic scenography created for the memorable concert by Luciano Pavarotti in Central Park in New York in 1993. Monumenta in Agrigento is his last grandiose installation created inside the Valley of the Temples.
PLESSI MUSEUM
Passo del Brennero (BZ) – Highway A 22 – km 1+300
Free admission
Open 24/24h
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