SUBSTITUTION
The upcoming exhibition at Loom, scheduled for 2026, features no physical artworks. What the audience encounters instead is a film, a documentary that replaces the entire exhibition experience and becomes, in itself, the sole work and the exhibition as a whole.
The film recounts the making of the show that was meant to be, from initial meetings with gallerists to the installation process, including the positioning of the works, like an extended behind-the-scenes sequence shot entirely within the gallery space.
The documentary fully takes the place of the exhibition, turning its narrative into the true creative act, not as a final outcome, but as the only possible content.
From a technical perspective, Francesco De Prezzo adopts a dry, almost diary-like visual language.
The camera lingers on details: hands hanging pieces, scattered materials, focused faces. The absence of any spectacular effects underscores the reflective nature of the work.
Here, film does not document, it replaces, becoming the singular and unrepeatable medium of the artwork. The gallery, typically a neutral container, becomes a central performer, playing itself as the setting of an exhibition yet to come.
By the end of the screening, the viewer is left with the feeling of having taken part in a radical experiment in displacement: from direct experience to mediated experience. One no longer attends an exhibition, but its idea, its unfolding, its own collapse and reinvention.
The video is not a supplement, but the only possible form of the work; mediation becomes content, and the viewer’s gaze becomes the true site of the exhibition.