In the work that he has produced in recent years, Enrico Vezzi has devoted his attention principally to the concept of "relationship": his emotional relationship with the space in which he works and his social relationship with the people he meets, which become a source of inspiration for his new work, and more especially the often invisible relationship between a historic memory and the places linked to it.
The installations spawned by his natural bent for observation and experience never draw a precise boundary between mediums; each work is the result of the fusion of several different techniques and artistic vocabularies, in which photography, drawing, painting and sculpture fuse into an ongoing visual fabric. In works like L’aria di un paese [The Air of a Country], in which two fans from the 1960s direct a flow of air onto the pages of an Italian Touring Club guide from 1956, the development of the idea was prompted by a sentence he read in the book: "... in the choice of pictures we have aimed to show some of the lesser known aspects of Italy [...] yet aspects which are capable nonetheless of giving the reader an idea of the air of a country". In this case the linguistic metaphor takes on concrete visibility and is depicted in a vaguely ironic sculptural form.
His attention to history as a source of inspiration for his work has grown considerably over the past year, to the point where it has turned his installation or performance art into a fully-fledged philological research where archive materials are brought to light, relationships between artists and patrons are narrated in their complexity, and political wheeling and dealing are revealed through a narrative oscillating between likelihood and truth.
Enrico Vezzi was born in 1979 in San Miniato, where he still lives today. He received a degree in psychology from the University of Florence in 2004. From the outset of his artistic career he has used art as a means to prompt a reflection on the relationship between collective history and personal memory. He has shown his work in numerous public and private venues in Italy. The collective exhibitions at which his work has been shown include: Il Caos, Isola di San Servolo, Venice, 2009; Emerging Talents, CCCStrozzina, Palazzo Strozzi, Florence, 2009; Usine de Reve, 26cc, Rome; Mastermind, Neon>Campobase, Bologna, 2008; White Balance, Via Nuova arte contemporanea, Florence, 2008; Il Rimedio Perfetto, Galleria Riccardo Crespi, Milan, 2008; TrafficZone 04, Galleria Civica di Trento, Centro Opera Universitaria, Trento, 2006; Rotte Metropolitane, Spazio SESV, Florence, 2005; RETENTIVA, Italian Pavilion, Venice, 2004.
How to get there: Take cpt bus no. 876 from Piazza Eufemi (San Miniato), bound for San Romano; alight at Ponte a Egola