Biography
“Presicce’s work is marked by three recurrent features. First, there is the time factor. This is expressed in the lengthy duration of the artistic act, often protracted to the extreme limit of the artist’s physical endurance, and that of his assistants-cum-adepts. This is linked to the deliberately limited time that the artist grants the spectator to witness sometimes only fragments of a performance, or to frozen time, when the performance turns into a motionless tableau vivant. The second feature is the “private” experience of his work, Presicce’s deliberate restriction of his audience, often admitting only a few
viewers to his performances. Lastly, there is travel as artistic practice and way of life, which leads the artist to explore and to seek out obscure locations of hidden significance, but also the journey made by viewers, who must often go to remote places to witness performances. With an almost liturgical approach, Luigi Presicce bases his work on staging performances that combine theatrical and ritual elements, with constant references to popular culture and iconography.
His artistic practice investigates a metaphysical and unreal dimension through performances featuring a strong visual impact that seek to transcend the theatrical dimension. His tableaux vivants, comprising literally “living” paintings or sculptures, draw on iconographical references manifested through dialogue and connections to more obscure symbologies linked to esotericism or freemasonry”.
Franziska Nori, Luigi Presicce, Storyteller and Mystic, in
F. Nori e B.Gordon, Luigi Presicce, Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi, Firenze 2013. A publication produced by Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi, Florence on the occasion of the EMERGING TALENTS 2011 award, Centre for Contemporary Culture Strozzina, Palazzo Strozzi, Florence
