Enrico Vezzi

Un nuovo inizio, 2020
Video smartphone HD, 2’16’’
© Enrico Vezzi
The artist thanks Studio Archivio Mauro Staccioli and Galleria Il Ponte for the permission to use their spaces, for supplying the original materials and for their contribution to making the work.

Enrico Vezzi has always thought of his works as the trace of an attempt to create a relationship between the historical memory and the places connected to it.
Hence, for the Digital for Mauro Staccioli project, he felt the need to visit Staccioli’s home-studio, and then decided to create a video as the ideal trace of the meeting between his world and that of Staccioli.
The video has a precedent: before leaving his studio, the day before the lockdown, Vezzi had filmed himself going from the entrance to a work of his that had never been put on display before: his daughter’s first school bag, tipped out onto the floor, with hundreds of stones/asteroids coming out to invade the space.
For Digital for Mauro Staccioli he shifts that video and work from his studio to Staccioli’s studio, altering the work by replacing his daughter’s bag with a bag that Staccioli used to use in his travels.
Filmed in black and white, the video Un nuovo inizio is removed from the specific situation and projected into an absolute present where Vezzi sees Staccioli’s studio as if it were his own, to then return to his own studio with new eyes.

“The video aims to act at different levels. At the collective level, it aims to stimulate people to ask where that place is and one day maybe try to go there and, at the same time, to give a new vision of Staccioli and his work by revealing his private side… At my level, it gives me the chance to actively compare my way of working with this artist; indeed, while I knew some of his works, I wasn’t well aware of some of his sensitivities and political and social leanings….. To finish, at the personal level, it set out to try to recapture how the people who met me there saw that place, how they saw Mauro’s work and his life, through a momentary time lag…. I imagined him coming home… on a normal day, from one of his many trips. But that day was different…it wasn’t the World that met his cosmos, but the Cosmos that wanted to be welcomed into his world. It was like a new start.” (Enrico Vezzi)

Enrico Vezzi was born in 1979 in San Miniato (Pisa), where he lives and works.
His work has featured in group and solo projects in institutional venues in Italy and abroad, including: Estuario Project Space, Prato (2019); SRISA Gallery, Florence (2018); Palazzo Grassi, Venice (2017); Meštrovićev Paviljon, Zagreb (2017); Centrale Fies, Trento (2016); Galerie See Studio, Paris (2015); DC, Pordenone (2013); Parco della Musica, Rome (2013); Fondazione March, Padua, (2012); Museo di Villa Croce, Genoa (2012); CCC Strozzina, Florence (2009); Galleria Riccardo Crespi, Milan (2008); Galleria Via Nuova, Florence (2008) and Padiglione Italia, Venice (2004).
Parallel to his exhibition work, he has conducted workshops, lessons and conferences in partnership with: AAA in Brussels; Radar in Loughborough; Fabrica de Pensule in Cluj-Napoca; Careof in Milan; Bevilacqua La Masa in Venice; Fondazione Fotografia in Modena; Neon>Campobase in Bologna; Museo MIC in Faenza and Museo Villa Croce in Genoa.
Since 2008 he has been an active part of the Base/Progetti per l’arte group in Florence.

in dialogue with Mauro Staccioli, Quito ’98, Quito, Ecuador, 1998