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Francesco De Prezzo “29 ways to destroy a painting”, publication, 2026, 72 pages, COLOUR, Edition: 100, Pub: FOOTNOTE Gallery [Ghent]
“Creative crises marked by self-destruction and the rejection of the work have been a professional interest of mine for many years. These are artistic trajectories whose duration and intensity vary considerably; yet they tend to pass through remarkably similar phases: recognition, identification, momentum, structure, saturation, rejection, and so on.
The history of my Patient, however, is among the most singular I know. The paintings are undoubtedly detailed, but profoundly hostile toward themselves, as if aware of their own impending end. Each work, once completed, would immediately enter into conflict with its own existence. Painting, rather than stabilizing into an image, began to exert internal pressure, as though its own language had become insufficient to contain it. The painterly gesture, pushed to the extreme of control, thus turned into the very precondition for its demolition.
In my Patient, destruction does not follow a state of crisis, but one of excessive clarity. When the image reaches complete legibility, the process stops. Total comprehensibility coincides, for him, with the functional exhaustion of the work. The finished painting is experienced as a form of cognitive closure, not because it is wrong, but because it is definitive.”(...)
29 Ways to Destroy a Painting is a conceptual publication that treats destruction not as an iconoclastic gesture, but as a critical tool for interrogating the status of the image, painting, and contemporary perception. The book does not recount a single artwork, nor does it document a completed project; rather, it operates as a theoretical and visual device that stages the liminal moment in which painting ceases to be an image and becomes a problem.
The work unfolds as a fragmented archive in which texts, images, diagrams, photographs, and technical descriptions coexist without ever settling into a linear narrative. The “29 ways” referenced in the title are not operational instructions but conceptual positions: each represents a different mode of dissolution of the painted image, on both a material and a symbolic level. In this context, destruction means interrupting the artwork’s claim to self-sufficiency, sabotaging its definitive legibility, and preventing it from crystallizing into a closed, reassuring object.
One of the book’s central concerns is the saturation of meaning. When an image becomes fully intelligible, readable, and “closed,” it loses its capacity to generate questions. Destruction then functions as a regulatory act rather than an impulsive gesture: it targets the areas of greatest structural coherence, where meaning appears most stable. In doing so, painting is pushed toward a condition of controlled instability, in which what matters is no longer the final image but the residue, the trace, the memory of what has been removed.
The book often adopts a pseudo-clinical, almost analytical voice, observing the creative process as if it were a case study. This apparent distance shifts attention away from subjective expression and toward the functioning of perceptual mechanisms. Painting is treated as a surface that exposes the limits of vision itself. In this sense, the operation of dissolution and destruction becomes a way to reveal the impossibility of a complete substitution between image and reality: the artwork can never take the place of the world without allowing a void to emerge.
Visually, the book alternates monochrome fields, sparse layouts, documentary images, and technical descriptions of reproduction processes. Repetition, seriality, and formal reduction contribute to an atmosphere of suspension, in which the work seems continually deferred. Painting, emptied of its representational function, is transformed into a “placeholder”: a neutral field that activates the viewer’s gaze rather than satisfying it.
29 Ways to Destroy a Painting is a radical reflection on renunciation as an artistic strategy. To destroy does not mean to negate art, but to save it from a form of cognitive exhaustion. Through subtraction, the work reasserts its vitality by shifting meaning from object to relation, from image to perception, and from presence to its operative absence.
29 ways to destroy a painting, [ FOOTNOTE Gallery [Ghent], NL
Francesco De Prezzo “29 ways to destroy a painting”, publication, 2026, 72 pages, COLOUR, Edition: 100, Pub: FOOTNOTE Gallery [Ghent]
“Creative crises marked by self-destruction and the rejection of the work have been a professional interest of mine for many years. These are artistic trajectories whose duration and intensity vary considerably; yet they tend to pass through remarkably similar phases: recognition, identification, momentum, structure, saturation, rejection, and so on.
The history of my Patient, however, is among the most singular I know. The paintings are undoubtedly detailed, but profoundly hostile toward themselves, as if aware of their own impending end. Each work, once completed, would immediately enter into conflict with its own existence. Painting, rather than stabilizing into an image, began to exert internal pressure, as though its own language had become insufficient to contain it. The painterly gesture, pushed to the extreme of control, thus turned into the very precondition for its demolition.
In my Patient, destruction does not follow a state of crisis, but one of excessive clarity. When the image reaches complete legibility, the process stops. Total comprehensibility coincides, for him, with the functional exhaustion of the work. The finished painting is experienced as a form of cognitive closure, not because it is wrong, but because it is definitive.”(...)
29 Ways to Destroy a Painting is a conceptual publication that treats destruction not as an iconoclastic gesture, but as a critical tool for interrogating the status of the image, painting, and contemporary perception. The book does not recount a single artwork, nor does it document a completed project; rather, it operates as a theoretical and visual device that stages the liminal moment in which painting ceases to be an image and becomes a problem.
The work unfolds as a fragmented archive in which texts, images, diagrams, photographs, and technical descriptions coexist without ever settling into a linear narrative. The “29 ways” referenced in the title are not operational instructions but conceptual positions: each represents a different mode of dissolution of the painted image, on both a material and a symbolic level. In this context, destruction means interrupting the artwork’s claim to self-sufficiency, sabotaging its definitive legibility, and preventing it from crystallizing into a closed, reassuring object.
One of the book’s central concerns is the saturation of meaning. When an image becomes fully intelligible, readable, and “closed,” it loses its capacity to generate questions. Destruction then functions as a regulatory act rather than an impulsive gesture: it targets the areas of greatest structural coherence, where meaning appears most stable. In doing so, painting is pushed toward a condition of controlled instability, in which what matters is no longer the final image but the residue, the trace, the memory of what has been removed.
The book often adopts a pseudo-clinical, almost analytical voice, observing the creative process as if it were a case study. This apparent distance shifts attention away from subjective expression and toward the functioning of perceptual mechanisms. Painting is treated as a surface that exposes the limits of vision itself. In this sense, the operation of dissolution and destruction becomes a way to reveal the impossibility of a complete substitution between image and reality: the artwork can never take the place of the world without allowing a void to emerge.
Visually, the book alternates monochrome fields, sparse layouts, documentary images, and technical descriptions of reproduction processes. Repetition, seriality, and formal reduction contribute to an atmosphere of suspension, in which the work seems continually deferred. Painting, emptied of its representational function, is transformed into a “placeholder”: a neutral field that activates the viewer’s gaze rather than satisfying it.
29 Ways to Destroy a Painting is a radical reflection on renunciation as an artistic strategy. To destroy does not mean to negate art, but to save it from a form of cognitive exhaustion. Through subtraction, the work reasserts its vitality by shifting meaning from object to relation, from image to perception, and from presence to its operative absence.
29 ways to destroy a painting, [ FOOTNOTE Gallery [Ghent], NL