Fabrizio Plessi dispelled the misconception surrounding ‘ars gratia artis’ and put technology at the service of nature

Fabrizio Plessi, a pioneer of video art who passed away on Sunday at the age of 86, had placed technology at the service of nature, be it the four elements or human nature. He maintained an unshakeable faith in this moral principle, despite the fact that, on a couple of occasions, certain scoundrels had taken advantage of his frailty to rob him and shove him as he was returning home from his studio on the Giudecca. He lived in a marvellous building in San Polo, amongst the quiet streets of Venice, which he had chosen as his academic and personal home, enamoured as he was with water and the Parmenidean flow – he, a down-to-earth man from Emilia who had begun to put his theories into practice in Germany. He would unwittingly utter maxims that everyone used as aphorisms.

He used to say, for example, that technology as we understand it today “does not exist” because we are mistaken in viewing it as an alien and looming component of our existence; whereas if we were to use it for what it is – namely, the fusion of art, craftsmanship and human intelligence, that is, as a subject (which, in the classical era, was actually studied) – we would know how to put it at our service. Plessi also said that ‘the digital is spiritual’, and we all saw proof of this a few months ago when, at the opening of Milan Art Week and as part of a series of dialogues between fashion and contemporary art organised by Deloitte Arts and Culture and *Il Foglio della Moda*, he exhibited his ‘Capita Aurea’, a video installation depicting an imperial head slowly dissolving into liquid gold, evoking the passage of time, the transience of power and the fleeting nature of glory. It was installed beneath one of the large crucifixes in the former church of San Paolo Converso on Corso Italia in Milan, radiating a power that went straight to everyone’s heart; it was due to remain on display for two weeks, but stayed there for three months.

It was one of Plessi’s final projects, alongside “Plessi sposa Brixia”, created between the Archaeological Park of Roman Brescia and the Santa Giulia Museum, and “Nero oro” in Padua, in the former Church of Sant’Agnese, where a path wound its way through the luminous mosaic of the nave, materialising as a cascade of gold in the hypogeum to highlight the archaeological finds. Eighteen appearances at the Biennale, countless awards, his first international breakthrough in 1987 at Documenta 8 in Kassel with the monumental installation “Roma”, although as early as 1973, with “Acquabiografico” presented at the Galleria Vinciana, it was already clear where his research would lead him: water as a condition.

Whilst chatting with Giovanni Bonotto, the textile industrialist behind the art exhibited in his factory, and with Carmelo Carbotti, who is overseeing the “Economy of Beauty” project for Banca Ifis at that Milanese art and culture event, Plessi reiterated what all great artists of every era know, namely that "ars gratia artis" is a late-nineteenth-century invention, that patronage has played a fundamental role in the development of Western aesthetics and that, specifically, fashion and art can run on parallel tracks, collaborating for mutual growth without anyone having cause for complaint. In the year 2000, he had designed the immense “Mare verticale” for the Hannover Expo, standing forty-four metres tall. It is a pity that nobody mentioned it when, two months ago, Louis Vuitton drew inspiration from it for the staging of its menswear show. Everyone simply thought of the water that was in short supply in Paris, and, naturally, complained.