Lot 527 D

This work can be viewed at Lempertz in Brussels:

Grote Hertstraat 6 Rue du Grand Cerf
1000 Brussels
T +32 2 514 0586
brussel@lempertz.com

These five iron cabinets may be acquired as a group or individually.

Water has been the key element in the work of the internationally leading video artist Fabrizio Plessi since 1968. In his impressive, expansive video sculptures and installations he combines various, what appear at first opposing, materials, resulting in a visual as well as a contextual attraction. In the present work, with the connection of natural materials to technical machines, Plessi summarises the essence of his artistic thoughts: „La Stanza del Mare, the Space of the Sea, shows a long row of similar stanzas next to each other. The monitors' videos in the upper parts of the cabinets show sea-water and breaking waves. Numerous horizontal laths replace the doors, partially covering the monitors. The pieces of wood are different in colour and quality, age and condition, so that a poetic structure is created, almost like an impressionistic painting. They remind of drift-wood, washed ashore from time to time by the sea. Now it is these pieces of wood that put up a barrier, almost as if they wanted to protect the sea from the spectators' eyes, from the visitors on the beach, the destroyers of the beauty of the nature. These cabinets, here called space, are to be understood as a hymn to the sea, a declaration of love to water.” (Dorothea van der Koelen, Fabrizio Plessi, Opus Video Sculpture, Catalogue Raisonne of the Video Sculptures and installations 1976-1988, Mainz and Munich 1988, p.246/250)