The set up of Fabrizio Plessi’s work is usually extremely monumental. For example, ‘Materia prima’ (1989) consisted of a crypt-like space in which ‘dead monitors’ were packed in travertine and ‘Tempo liquido’ (1993) was a metres high waterwheel built up of monitors. ‘L’anima della pietra’ too, consisting of 21 pedestals, higher than a man, on which a heavy block of stone and a monitor on its side are mounted in pairs, is almost architectural in character.
The 21 pedestals are set up in a long row which creates the impression of a corridor. It was only by walking the entire length of the row that all the images can be appreciated.
The stones and monitors on the pedestals are of the same size. They form, as it were, each other’s mirror image or opposite pole. The relationship between the monitor and stone opens up a whole range of dualities. A confrontation unravels of transparency and mass, of positive and negative, material and immaterial, illusion and hard reality. This theme of Apparent and Being, the question as to where reality stops and (medial) illusion begins is a running theme is Plessi’s work.
The monitors show images (in negative) of sculpted heads, classical images and portraits of mediaeval kings. The X-ray like character of the images seems to suggest that the electronic medium is revealing something hidden in the stone that isn’t there (yet). The poetic title refers after all to the soul, the heart of the stone. However, there is also an immediate alienating effect because the heads have been eroded by the passage of time. Today, the past and the future run into each other. Plessi plays a remarkable game with our observation and creates a web of references from the present to the historical past, from origin and primaeval material to image to original. From that which is not yet, to that which is no longer, from the soul of the stone to petrified soul.
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Geert-Jan Strengholt
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21 video players, 21 monitors, 21 stones, 21 steel frames
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1 9 9 6 
