Fabrizio Plessis. Soul of stone Automatic translate

Venue: Main building (Volkhonka, 12, halls No. 16, 24, 31)
Curators of the exhibition: Giuseppe Barbieri, Sylvia Burini, Olga Shishko

The State Museum of Fine Arts named after A. S. Pushkin, as part of the Pushkin XXI direction, opens an exhibition-intervention of one of the most prominent representatives of media art - Italian artist Fabrizio Plessi. Especially for the Pushkin Museum, 16 video sculptures were created, which will be presented in dialogue with works from the Tsvetaeva collection of casts, as well as a digital reconstruction of the fresco from the Hall of the Giants in the Palazzo Te in Mantua. The museum, following the artist, offers a new look at its own collection.

The pioneer of video art in Italy, Fabrizio Plessis connects the past and the present with the help of modern technology. The artist was the first to use a television screen as a base, inside of which an irrepressible digital stream of water and fire sweeps. Sound performances, ephemeral architectural structures, television and theater sceneries constitute the backdrop into which Plessis embeds his video sculptures and in which the use of technology becomes a natural element. The artist combines modern artistic methods with classical matter, trying to penetrate the "body of stone", invading the plane of the baroque fresco.

The basis of the exhibition in the Pushkin Museum. A.S. Pushkin - an idea that often stands at the origins of Plessis’s artistic searches, and at the same time is clearly visible in the mission of the museum - the classic always exists in dialogue with modernity and vice versa, innovation is inextricably linked with a rethinking of the past. It is from these premises that Plessis proceeds, building a dialogue with the museum space. To implement his plan, the artist selected 16 casts from the collection of the Pushkin Museum im. A.S. Pushkin, representing the masterpieces of Greek art of late classics and Hellenism, as well as the art of Ancient Rome and Italy. With the help of multimedia, revealing the true form of antique works, and the game of mirror casts appear before the viewer more truthfully than the originals. This theme also arises in some large-format drawings of the artist, which are an important part of the exhibition space, which, in turn, seems to be carved inside the museum. The appeal to antique samples, from which later the individual portrait genre would emerge, as a prototype, is a kind of search for new important connections between modern masters and works of art of the past. A similar project was shown in 2009 at the 53rd Venice Biennale in a medieval palazzo.

The exhibition will also recreate a digital mural from the Giants Hall in the Palazzo Te, created by Giulio Romano in the 16th century. The plot is based on an episode from Ovid’s Metamorphosis. Water, one of Plessis’s favorite motifs, becomes an allusion to the Flood, and its reflection on the screens used for installation is a source for reflection on the crisis and rebirth as integral stages of human life.

Fabrizio Plessis, artist:

Truly striking is the idea that a work of art exists in its material basis not yet touched by the artist. Creative flair and creative power, like the thread of Ariadne, lead the master to the heart of future work.

Today, even elements of everyday life such as a metal detector can take us on this path, allowing us to see something “different” and previously inaccessible, to penetrate that primary sphere of art and comprehend all its magic and depth. These new technologies, in fact, closely related to human nature, slightly, but nevertheless tangibly touching the surface of the stone, reveal its soul to us.

Sylvia Burini, professor of the history of Russian art and contemporary art at the Venetian University Ca ’Foscari, director of the Center for the Study of Russian Culture (CSAR):

Italian art has always been closely associated with the collection of the Pushkin Museum im. A.S. Pushkin. The museum presents both the originals of the most important works of art, as well as an incredible collection of casts showing the diversity of Italian sculptural tradition - from ancient Rome to the Renaissance. Any tradition retains its relevance through constant interaction with modernity and new interpretations. The solid academic base that has been at the core of Pushkin since the museum opened was expanded over time through meetings with the public and artists. Fabrizio Plessis, one of the protagonists of Italian video art, engages in a dialogue with the museum’s collection and with the tradition that it reflects.

Olga Shishko, head of the department of film and media art of the Pushkin Museum. A. S. Pushkina, curator of the direction "Pushkin XXI":

Art museums are repositories of knowledge about traditional fine art, but also a source of inspiration for new projects and the development of the art process. The direction “Pushkin XXI” presents two projects of the Italian artist Fabrizio Plessis, a pioneer of media art, dedicated to the theme of antiquity, which appears in the author’s works as a stream of time, the energy movement of the mind.

Early appreciating the possibilities of digital technology, Fabrizio Plessis, as an alchemist, is trying to overcome the line not only between art and science, but also between nature and technology, combining the elements of nature and digital technology. Plessy has the ability to humanize technological tools, turning them into carriers of emotions and concepts, and at the same time revitalize the story, giving the viewer the opportunity to openly read the connections of the past and present.

June 5 at the Pushkin Museum. A. Pushkin will host the International Scientific Conference dedicated to the opening of the exhibition. The coordinator will be the director of the Italian Institute of Culture in Moscow Olga Strada. During the meetings, the head of the Department of Philosophy and Cultural Heritage at Ca ’Foscari University, Giuseppe Barbieri, will present a report on the authenticity of interpretations of ancient heritage in the Renaissance and the culture of subsequent eras; the director of the Center for the Study of Russian Culture, Silvia Burini and Marco Tonelli, will discuss with Fabrizio Plessis the issues of perceiving the body and its reflection in different eras in different cultures, the problems of creating casts and simulacra; Olga Shishko will offer her view on the exhibition in the context of the Pushkin XXI direction; and Stefano Baia Curioni, a professor of art management at the University of Bocconi in Milan, a member of the Supreme Council of the Ministry of Cultural Heritage, Cultural Activities and Tourism, discusses art in a global context and intercultural dialogue.

Fabrizio Plessis (b. 1940) - artist, teacher and stage designer. He studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Venice. Repeatedly participated in international exhibitions such as the Venice Biennale (since 1970) and Documenta in Kassel. Plessis’s solo exhibitions were organized at the Guggenheim Museum in New York and Bilbao, the Scuderia del Quirinale in Rome, the Martin Gropius House in Berlin, the Institute of Contemporary Art in Valencia, the Vienna Museum of Art History and the Joan Miro Foundation in Barcelona. In 2011, in the newly opened pavilion of Venice at the Venice Biennale, his large-scale project “Vertical Seas” was presented. For his installations, Plessis used the spaces of St. Mark’s Square in Venice, the Valley of the Temples of Agrigento, La Lonja in Mallorca, the Giants Hall in the Palazzo Te in Mantua and the Venetian theater of La Fenice. In 2013, near the Brenner Alpine Pass, the Plessis Museum was opened, a futuristic author’s project conceived as a single work of architecture, sculpture and design, harmoniously integrated into the natural environment.

The exhibition was organized in collaboration with the program of the Center for the Study of Russian Culture (CSAR) at Ca ’Foscari University in Venice, the purpose of which is to present new perspectives of dialogue between Russian and Western art. The project was implemented with the participation of the Alberto Peruzzo Foundation in Venice, the Italian Institute of Culture in Moscow and personally Marianna Sardarova.

"Pushkin XXI"

"Pushkin XXI" is a program that is designed to give viewers an idea of ​​contemporary art and its most prominent representatives, to demonstrate the art of new classics who speak not only the language of painting, graphics and photography, but also the language of new forms. Video, sound, performance can vividly and harmoniously fit into the context of a traditional museum. New media, which are often temporary and ephemeral, can give a new read to classical works, making them breathe, move and engage in dialogue with the audience.

"Pushkin XXI" is a museum in a museum. The basis of this direction is a combination of educational, research and exhibition activities, which will show the evolution of the artistic image - from traditional methods to modern technologies.

Tsvetaeva collection of casts

The collection of casts and copies, typical of museums in Europe in the 19th century, is intrinsically and systematically unique to the 21st century, the composition of which was initially determined by the state and interests of art history at the end of the 19th century. Today, a collection of casts is exhibited in the historical building of the museum in only a third of the halls reserved for them by I.V. Tsvetaev. Most of this collection - about 1000 exhibits - is on display at the I.V. Tsvetaev Educational Art Museum. In addition to the cognitive value, casts of great works of art of various cultures and eras, combined together in the museum space, have developed into a unique artistic environment that gives the museum a unique appeal of an imaginary time travel.

State Museum of Fine Arts named after A.S. Pushkin

The A. Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts is a museum complex that has one of the largest art collections of foreign art in Russia that stores artifacts created by masters of different eras - from Ancient Egypt and ancient Greece to the present day. Today, the museum has about 700 thousand works. The pearl of the collection is a collection of French art of the 19th – 20th centuries - one of the most famous collections of works by the impressionists and post-impressionists in the world. In the department of personal collections, created in the Pushkin Museum to them. A.S. Pushkin in 1985, more than thirty private collections are stored.