EVILICHTUNGEN – International Light Art Biennial
Hildesheim | 23 January – 26 January 2020

»La Stanza del Mare« (1990/1991) by Fabrizio Plessi will be exhibited in its entirety for the first time since 1993 at this years International Light Art Biennial – EVILICHTUNGEN in Hildesheim, Germany. At the UNESCO world heritage site St. Michaelis Church.

Since 1968, water has been the defining element in the work of the internationally renowned video artist Fabrizio Plessi. In his impressive, space-consuming video sculptures, he combines different, initially opposing materials and thus creates a visual and content-related tension. In the present work, Plessi condenses the essence of his concept of the work by combining natural materials with technical devices, as Dorothea van der Koelen writes: "La Stanza del Mare, the sea space, shows a long row [...] of similar cabinets placed next to each other. The videos of the monitors in the upper part of the cabinets show seawater and the waves of the surf. Instead of the doors there are numerous crossbars that reach so far up that they partially cover the monitors. The woods vary in colour and quality, age and condition, creating a poetic structure, almost like an impressionistic painting. They are reminiscent of driftwoods that the sea washes onto the beach from time to time. It is precisely these woods that now create a barrier here, as if they wanted to protect the sea from the eyes of the viewers, from the visitors to the beaches, from the destroyers of the beauty of nature. These cabinets - here called space - are to be understood as a hymn to the sea, a declaration of love to the water."

(Fabrizio Plessi, Opus Video Sculpture, catalogue raisonné of video sculptures and installations 1976-1988, Mainz and Munich 1988, p.246/250).

(Loans by ZKM | Zentrum für Kunst und Medien und der T.W. Foundation in Hamburg.)

Image: Fabrizio Plessi - Stanza del Mare, 1990/1991 | Photo courtesy of T.W. Stiftung