Luigi Presicce

Ritratto di un cerchio dal vero,
performance per bagnanti occasionali. Litoranea Porto Cesareo., 2020
Video by Grazia Amelia Bellitta
Video, sound, 2’44’’
© Luigi Presicce

Luigi Presicce makes performances which constantly refer to popular and ritual culture and iconography. They aim to go beyond the theatrical dimension by proposing tableaux vivants made of ‘living’ paintings or sculptures, placed in a dialogue with symbols linked to esoterism and Freemasonry.
The video Ritratto di un cerchio dal vero reproduces the performance of the same name which drew its inspiration from Staccioli; that is, from a recurrent shape in his work (the circle) and his conception of nature as an element to ‘draw live’ through the marks traced in the landscape by his sculptures.
On the keel of a yacht marooned by the tide, the maestro draws live, with compasses, the wooden circle shown to him by the character on his right. That circle is the symbol of perfection, but it is also the origin of every human face that can equally be drawn live, as well as the exemplification of the Italian drawing tradition.
In the same way as Staccioli tried to dominate the force of nature by making his sculptures a part of it, by walking on water the two characters in Presicce’s video seem to dominate its force.

“The performance Ritratto di un cerchio dal vero is strongly inspired by Mauro Staccioli’s work. Nature, in its perfection, and the phenomenal world, are represented by a circle. This circle is both the world and the origin of all faces. Every child’s hand draws a circle on the paper and places two eyes, a nose and a mouth in the centre. I don’t feel I can add any words to those that already exist on the esoteric nature of this geometrical figure. Instead, what attracts me is that implementation of a classical tradition of life drawing, that is, the maestro of the arts who draws a live model. A master executor plays out the pleasantly intimate and investigatory aspect of what is more than anything an academic practice as he takes a wooden circle from the hands of a human ‘support’ that seems to have come straight out of I racconti di Canterbury, But we’re not talking an Instagram ‘performance’, in which someone annoyingly quickly creates an incredibly like but historically pointless portrait; and it isn’t an ‘athletic’ gesture either, like that of Giotto who could trace a perfect circle freehand. Here the master, closer to the Master of the Freemason tradition than anything else, as the trade of constructor would have it, busies himself drawing a circle with a large pair of compasses. This gesture, mechanical but virile in its analogical beauty, is placed, or rather counterposed, on the support where it’s generated: the keel of a boat, to be precise a yacht, torn from its anchor and marooned by the force of a tide. Here nature (a topic dear to our Staccioli) returns as a creative but also destructive force. The two protagonists dominate this natural force. They almost walk on it thanks to a submerged structure that lifts them so they float on their feet. Worthy of a miracle, the two actors take part in another act of faith which is the aulic creation of perfection, the portrait of a circle.” (Luigi Presicce)

Luigi Presicce (Porto Cesareo, Lecce, 1976) lives and works in Florence.
As well as creating performances for important exhibition venues in Italy and abroad, he founded “Brownmagazine” (with Luca Francesconi and Valentina Suma) in Milan in 2008 followed by the “Brown Project Space”, of which he is the programme organizer. In 2011 he founded “Archiviazioni (esercizi di indagine e discussione sul sud contemporaneo)” in Lecce with Giusy Checola and Salvatore Baldi. Since 2010 he has been involved in the “Lu Cafausu” project, earning him an invitation from AND AND AND to Documenta 13, Kassel. In 2016 he was a founding member of Fondazione Lac o le Mon in San Cesario di Lecce. Since 2017 along with Francesco Lauretta he has been part of the Scuola di Santa Rosa, a free drawing school based in Florence and New York. In 2018 and 2019, he devised and organized the “Simposio di pittura”, at the Fondazione Lac o le Mon, a residence/platform centred around Italian painting of the last 30 years. In 2018 he curated “Extemporanea-play”, at Trebisonda Spazio per l’Arte Contemporanea, Perugia and “Forme uniche nella continuità dello spazio”, at Rizzuto Gallery, Palermo. In 2019 he curated “Facciatosta Records, di Enne Boi” at the Toast Project Space, Florence.
Website: www.luigipresicce.tumblr.com

in dialogue with Mauro Staccioli, Roma, 2011.

Photo by S. D’Exéa