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LIMINAL FIGURES
In this series, documentation introduces a central line of inquiry: the unstable relationship between the artwork, space, and visibility. A sharp divide emerges between the perception of the exhibition space and the individual pieces, which appear isolated, as if awaiting installation or already removed from the gallery.
This gesture becomes subversive, challenging the conventional relationship between the artwork and its display, and reframing exhibition as a critical act in itself.
Within this framework, the exhibition interrogates the supposed neutrality of gallery documentation, revealing the constructed nature of visibility. The strategic displacement of the works toward the end of the documentation reflects how spatial context shapes perception.
By simultaneously isolating and clustering the objects, the artist places the viewer in a state of perceptual uncertainty. This approach echoes Rosalind Krauss’s concept of the expanded field, where the boundaries between medium, space, and viewing become fluid and negotiable.
Here, the act is not one of removal, but of isolation, both visual and spatial, which not only critiques but also revitalizes the modernist discourse on objecthood and presence. By blurring the line between installation and documentation, this practice sustains a constant tension, raising questions about the grammar of exhibition-making and triggering a perceptual short-circuit. The viewer is left to wonder whether the work has been removed, is yet to be installed, or is meant to be integrated, particularly in light of the visual juxtaposition with photographs of the empty space.
LIMINAL FIGURES
In this series, documentation introduces a central line of inquiry: the unstable relationship between the artwork, space, and visibility. A sharp divide emerges between the perception of the exhibition space and the individual pieces, which appear isolated, as if awaiting installation or already removed from the gallery.
This gesture becomes subversive, challenging the conventional relationship between the artwork and its display, and reframing exhibition as a critical act in itself.
Within this framework, the exhibition interrogates the supposed neutrality of gallery documentation, revealing the constructed nature of visibility. The strategic displacement of the works toward the end of the documentation reflects how spatial context shapes perception.
By simultaneously isolating and clustering the objects, the artist places the viewer in a state of perceptual uncertainty. This approach echoes Rosalind Krauss’s concept of the expanded field, where the boundaries between medium, space, and viewing become fluid and negotiable.
Here, the act is not one of removal, but of isolation, both visual and spatial, which not only critiques but also revitalizes the modernist discourse on objecthood and presence. By blurring the line between installation and documentation, this practice sustains a constant tension, raising questions about the grammar of exhibition-making and triggering a perceptual short-circuit. The viewer is left to wonder whether the work has been removed, is yet to be installed, or is meant to be integrated, particularly in light of the visual juxtaposition with photographs of the empty space.
"The combination of the angle of the path, as viewed from the high window, our melancholic general dissatisfaction with tedious reality, and the swaying/overlapping branches of the two willow trees, often leads us, at least momentarily, to see figures that aren’t there.
That is, on numerous occasions, particularly in dusky light, it seems as if someone is rounding our barn and then walking out of sight. To be sure, we always go down, with flashlight in hand, never to find anything. Before you cast us a person more apt to see phantoms than yourself, we ask you to consider the simple question: what is ever really there for us humans? What isn’t a moiré of mood, temperament, memory, hope and expectation? Some kind of rhythm of preference or the irresistibly sweet path of personal logic?
Just think what presumptive apparitions of bias or predilection rise up as someone says “when young I was kidnapped” or “my grandfather was a close friend of Susan Sontag” or “Venice is sinking” or “she’s actually a singer” or “this was an ancient burial site” or “you stand to make a lot of money” or “we’d like to offer you the job” or “the first stegosaurus skeleton was found in Colorado” or “I have a barn and some willow trees…
On the slightest suggestion, something always materializes. But of course it is always wildly incomplete.(...)”
- excerpted from the exhibition Francesco De Prezzo, Liminal Figures, on view from 28 April to 26 May 2025 at FORM