Luigi Presicce

Luigi Presicce (Porto Cesareo, Lecce – 1976) lives and works in Florence.

Luigi Presicce attended the Academy of Fine Arts in Lecce. His work was influenced by his independent studies. In 2007, he attended the Advanced Course in Visual Arts (CSAV) at the Antonio Ratti Foundation in Como with the American artist Joan Jonas. In 2008, as part of Artist in Residence, he participated in the workshop at Viafarini in Milan with the American artist Kim Jones. In Milan, in 2008 she founded (with Luca Francesconi and Valentina Suma) Brownmagazine and later Brown Project Space, for which she curated the programming. In 2011 with Giusy Checola and Salvatore Baldi he founded ‘Archiviazioni’ (exercises of investigation and discussion on the contemporary south) in Lecce. In 2012 he took part in Artists in Residence at MACRO, Rome, extending his invitation to nine other artists (Laboratorio). Since 2010, with Luigi Negro, Emilio Fantin, Giancarlo Norese and Cesare Pietroiusti he has been involved in the Lu Cafausu project promoting La festa dei vivi (reflecting on death) and with which he was invited by AND AND to dOCUMENTA13, Kassel. Since 2016 he has been a founding member of the Lac o le Mon Foundation, San Cesario di Lecce. With Francesco Lauretta since 2017 every Tuesday he organises the Scuola di Santa Rosa, a free drawing school based in Florence and New York. He was selected for the 2018 Studio Program at Artists Allianc inc, New York, TAD Residency at Monastero del Carmine, Bergamo and Lacasapark, Gardiner, NY in 2019. He conceived and curated in 2018, 2019, 2021 and 2022 Painting Symposium, at Fondazione Lac o le Mon, a residency/platform centred on Italian painting of the last 30 years. He curated in 2018 Extemporanea-play, at Trebisonda Spazio per l’Arte Contemporanea, Perugia and Forme uniche nella continuità dello spazio, at Rizzuto Gallery, Palermo, in 2019 Facciatosta Records, by Enne Boi at Toast project space, Florence. In 2020 with Matteo Coluccia he conceived Polka Puttana, a travelling exhibition in a van that is renewed from place to place. He concluded in 2021 with a large exhibition at the Mattatoio in Rome a performance cycle that began in 2012 with the theme The Stories of the True Cross. He is currently involved in an itinerant training project for young artists and non-artists called L’Accademia dell’immobilità.

He has realised performances at Fondazione Claudio Buziol, Venice (2010), Thessaloniki Performance Festival, Biennale 3, Greece (2011), Reims Festival Scènes d’Europe, Frac Champagne-Ardenne, France (2011), Màntica festival, Cesena (2011), Corpus, MADRE, Naples (2012), We Folk – Drodesera Festival, Centrale Fies, Dro (2012), Art City Bologna 2013, Bologna (2013), CastelloInMovimento, Castello di Fosdinovo, Massa Carrara (2013), ARTDATE 2014, Bergamo (2014), Il teatro dei luoghi Fest, Lecce (2014), Kunsthalle Osnabruck, Germany (2015), MAMbo Bologna (2015), Marino Marini Museum, Florence (2015), Tenuta dello Scompiglio, Vorno-Capannori, Lucca (2016), Le Murate, Florence (2016), Palazzo Trevisan degli Ulivi, Swiss Cultural Institute, Venice (2017), Fondazione Lac o le Mon, San Cesario di Lecce (2017, 2018), MAP Museo de Arte Popular, Ciudad de Mexico (2018), Museum of Palazzo Pretorio, Prato (2018), Cuchifritos Gallery, New York City (2019), Pelanda, Mattatoio, Rome (2019), Metodo Milano, Milan (2019), Torre dell’Aglio, Vieste (2020), Church of San Francesco della Scarpa, Lecce (2021). He won the Epson Art Prize, Antonio Ratti Foundation, Como (2007), Emerging Talents Prize, CCC Strozzina, Palazzo Strozzi, Florence (2011), Long Play, MAGA, Gallarate (2012), Icona, ArtVerona, Verona (2014), Level 0, ArtVerona, Verona (2015), Opera Viva Barriera of Milan, Turin (2020). He was a finalist in the Moroso Prize, second and sixth editions with special mention (2011, 2017), the Maretti Prize, second edition with special mention, Havana (2014), the VAF Foundation Prize, seventh edition, Germany (2016) and the Anna Morettini Prize, first edition, Paris (2017).

STATEMENT

Trained in painting, for years he has synthesised the results of his studies with the language of performance, staging tableaux vivants of a metaphysical and surreal nature, with echoes from popular iconography, collective and personal memories, rich in allegories and symbolic allusions to esotericism, religion, traditions and ancient beliefs of his homeland. Rituals, stratifications, references to the history of art, to personalities and to events in recent history have marked Presicce’s entire research, in which the intense symbolic force of the images and the constructive layout have always declared his pictorial matrix.