Fabrizio Plessi, Pioneering Italian Video Artist and Experimenter, Dies at 86
Italian video-art pioneer Fabrizio Plessi died in Venice on August 23 at age 86, according to La Repubblica. Born April 3, 1940, in Reggio Emilia, Plessi studied and later taught in Venice, completing his degree at the Academy of Fine Arts in 1962 and beginning early research into water as a conceptual medium tied to time and memory. He made his first video works in 1973 with the Visual Activities Center at Palazzo dei Diamanti in Ferrara, presented Underwater at the Venice Film Festival in 1981 (later shown at Paris’s Centre Pompidou), and represented Italy at the 1986 Venice Biennale with Bronx (1986), a video installation involving 26 shovels and 26 television monitors. Plessi also exhibited at Documenta 8 in Kassel in 1987 and became known for installations that fused historical references with digital imagery, treating light and LED pixels as an “immaterial” and “spiritual” medium.
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This story was covered in Censorship, Looted Treasures, and Artists Under Watch