ORO, Fabrizio Plessi – Rifugio Digitale

Opening the space on April 13, 2022, in collaboration with the Forma Edizioni publishing house and Tornabuoni Arte will be Fabrizio Plessi, considered one of the forerunners of Videoart in Italy.

His artistic research has always revolved around the themes of water and fire rendered through video installations, video sculptures and videotapes. In the 1970s, he was one of the first to use the monitor as the main material and tool for his projects. His works, exhibited in the world’s most important museums, keep alive the dialogue with classicism, creating a link between past and future.

And it is precisely in the tunnel that the artist has exhibited ORO, a site-specific work that starts from the translucent walls with which this space is clad to create a giant mosaic of gold that as it melts moves and breathes “in its subterranean liquidity, resplendent and sumptuous.” The artist has imagined a single large work that almost biologically, can coexist with this anomalous and sensory circular architecture. The nocturnal, luminous reverberation of the work’s gilded surfaces modifies, alters, swells and expands like the waves of an evocative, abstract sea in constant motion. “The Digital Refuge is nothing but an innovative cultural crossroads that, precisely in a city like Florence, finds stimulus to confront and overlap with the pre-existing,” says Fabrizio Plessi. For Plessi, the spirit of communication is the true and profound philosophy of this place: the crossing of languages and different past and future experiences. The golden flow then will be able to give that collective imagination that we all need.

CURATORIAL INTRODUCTION, FABRIZIO PLESSI

For this new Digital Refuge I have imagined a single vast work that, almost organically, would be able to flourish in its unusual, sensorial, circular architecture. Using its translucent screens as my canvas, I created a gigantic mosaic of gold that melts and moves, breathing in its subterranean liquidity, splendid and sumptuous. The luminous nocturnal reverberations of their golden surfaces change, surge, stretch, swell and expand like the waves of an evocative, abstract sea, with its rhythmic, ceaseless movement. The Digital Refuge is simply an innovative cultural crossroads that, precisely in a city like Florence, finds the perfect stimulus for comparison and display, juxtaposing its art on all that has come before. The spirit of communication is the true and profound philosophy ofnthis extraordinary place: through the languages of different experiences, past and future. That is the meaning of this golden flow that represents the collective imagery we all require in the end. Everything moves and passes through the funnel of time in an endless replay of history and life.

CURATORIAL INTRODUCTION, FABRIZIO PLESSI

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