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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, [ 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, [ FOOTNOTE Gallery [Ghent], NL