Plessi Museum at the Brennero Pass

Plessi is the name of the artist, Plessi is also the name of the rest area where the small museum is located at the Brennero, the important Alpine pass between Italy and Austria. Fabrizio Plessi, born in 1940 in Reggio Emilia in Italy, is a contemporary installation, media and video artist who became internationally famous in the mid-Seventies with a new form of art, the video sculpture. In 1998 he opened his solo exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum in New York. Today Fabrizio Plessi lives and works in Venice, Cologne in Germany and Mallorca, the largest of the Balearic Islands.

The heart of the museum is his large installation "Die Seele der Natur" (The Soul of Nature), which he created in 2000 for the Expo Hannover, for the celebration of the Euregio. Actually, it consists of three individual compositions, namely a representation of the Province of Bolzano, the Province of Trento and the state of Tyrol. The central element here is water: The screens simulating immersion in water represent the South Tyrolean rivers, Tyrolean glaciers and Trentino lakes. Video installations, sculptures and graphic-painting works by the artist are also exhibited.

Outside, the Plessi Museum is a stately building with large glass surfaces, which also houses a rest area and a South Tyrolean delicatessen shop. The tables, chairs, workbenches and shelves made of corten steel, which can be found in the rest area, were also made by the artist. Opened in 2013 by Autostrada del Brennero SpA , the 13,000 sq m museum is intended to be a new way of combining travelling, rest and culture. And how to reach the museum? It is located along the Brennero Motorway heading north near Brennero village. At the southern border of the village, by the way, starts the Upper Valle Isarco Cycle Path which takes you to Vipiteno and Bressanone.