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TEXTS
>SUBSTITUTION LOGIC
>LIMINAL FIGURES
>LETTER TO M.
>SOMETIMES
Staging is the only form of creativity that interests me. Since today the documentation of art and artistic contexts constitutes the primary condition for the construction of historical responsibility and for any retrospective reading of the artistic event, my practice takes shape as a continuous investigation into the mediation devices produced by these processes, as well as a critical examination of their modes of operation.
Images, videos, critical texts, and oral narratives do not merely describe the work; they determine its very existence. To intervene in these elements therefore means to act directly upon the work itself, constructing and articulating it without the need for material contact, nor for its presence as a physical object.
From this perspective, does exhibiting today not primarily mean exhibiting the image of the work, rather than the work as such?
Any attempt to withdraw from this media logic is bound to collapse, since it is the gaze itself that produces, at the perceptual level, the fundamental condition that, from here on, we will define as “IMAGE.”
—
A group of people arranges itself in a circle around an empty center.
At the center there is no object, and yet everyone behaves as if something were already there. The object is gradually defined through partial descriptions, hypotheses, disagreements, expectations. There is no shared form, but there is a common tension toward that center, which begins to organize the relationships among the participants.
Over time, it is not the object that gains substance, but the reactions it generates: positions taken, alliances, conflicts, rituals of approach or withdrawal. The center remains empty, yet it becomes functional. When, eventually, a material trace appears, it does not inaugurate the work; rather, it constitutes a residue, a belated consequence, a sediment of dynamics already fully operative.
—
The elimination of the object does not produce a void, but rather a redistribution of responsibility. What would normally be delegated to form—meaning, authority, stability—is taken on by the context and by the subjects who inhabit it. The work is no longer what is shown, but what is continuously negotiated.
The imaginary object at the center of the circle functions as a catalyst: it does not represent something, but activates a series of projections that make it operative while it remains absent. Its effectiveness does not depend on visibility, but on its capacity to organize a shared symbolic space. It is within this space that the work takes shape, in the form of relations, discourses, and expectations.
When a materialization occurs, it does not clarify the work, but reduces it. The physical form is not the origin of the process, but one of its possible outcomes, often the least relevant. Once it appears, the object occupies a position already defined, inheriting meanings that are not intrinsic to it, but retroactively assigned.
—
At this point, it becomes readily apparent that the exhibition assumes the form of a placeholder: a device that occupies a position and immediately activates its consequences. The placeholder, the object we choose to place, organizes the exhibition space as a field of relations, within which expectations, projections, and interpretations become operative.
The work emerges within this field as an effect of the interactions generated by the exhibition. The viewer participates in the construction of the experience through their gaze, their movements, and their interpretive decisions. The exhibition acts as a structure that renders this process visible.
Every exhibition element functions as a variable in an ongoing test. Texts, images, voids, and cues contribute to defining an open system in which the viewer’s reactions acquire formal value. The placeholder operates as a measuring instrument for the production of meaning. The exhibition experience coincides with the test itself, and its duration corresponds to the activation of the device. Within this space, the image takes shape as the result of a continuous negotiation between context and gaze.
The exhibition thus takes shape as a site of verification, in which the work manifests as a shared process in constant redefinition.
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.
Dear M,
1. Have you ever tried staring at yourself in the mirror for more than half an hour? You start to see strange things.
2. This is just one of the principles of the act of observing.
Only when we are truly looking can we transform the reality in front of us. And now, in the persistence and obsession, we can find this principle of distortion amplified.
So, can you see anything? Because here, in the close-up view, objects have lost their contours.
Francesco De Prezzo operates within a radically liminal perceptual space, where experiencing the artwork is intimately tied to its apparent disappearance. Perception here is never a passive or linear act; instead, it involves a “derivative” engagement, unfolding through minimal traces, subtle clues, and intentional suggestions carefully constructed by the context encompassing the artwork, the observer, and the dynamic of the viewing experience itself. What the artist triggers is not merely an absence or an erasure but rather a subliminal and paradoxical presence that persists in the space between reality and simulation. Within this framework, the artwork is perceived even before it is rationally understood. It reveals itself most clearly when viewers experience unease or tension stemming from the uncertainty between what they see and what they are told, creating a perceptual friction that compels observers to inhabit an indefinite, uncertain space.
Consequently, the artwork assumes its definitive form through the cognitive process of the viewer, whose perception simultaneously actualizes and preserves it. The radical essence of Francesco De Prezzo's practice lies precisely in redefining the aesthetic experience as a collective mental event: the perception of the artwork is never separated from its surrounding documentation, nor from the narrative, oral, video, or photographic, that endures beyond the artwork’s apparent physical dissolution. Thus, the artist returns to perception the responsibility and power to continuously define, preserve, and shape what otherwise seems irretrievably elusive.
TEXTS
>LIMINAL FIGURES
>LETTER TO M.
>SOMETIMES
Images, videos, critical texts, and oral narratives do not merely describe the work; they determine its very existence. To intervene in these elements therefore means to act directly upon the work itself, constructing and articulating it without the need for material contact, nor for its presence as a physical object.
From this perspective, does exhibiting today not primarily mean exhibiting the image of the work, rather than the work as such?
Any attempt to withdraw from this media logic is bound to collapse, since it is the gaze itself that produces, at the perceptual level, the fundamental condition that, from here on, we will define as “IMAGE.”
—
A group of people arranges itself in a circle around an empty center.
At the center there is no object, and yet everyone behaves as if something were already there. The object is gradually defined through partial descriptions, hypotheses, disagreements, expectations. There is no shared form, but there is a common tension toward that center, which begins to organize the relationships among the participants.
Over time, it is not the object that gains substance, but the reactions it generates: positions taken, alliances, conflicts, rituals of approach or withdrawal. The center remains empty, yet it becomes functional. When, eventually, a material trace appears, it does not inaugurate the work; rather, it constitutes a residue, a belated consequence, a sediment of dynamics already fully operative.
—
The elimination of the object does not produce a void, but rather a redistribution of responsibility. What would normally be delegated to form—meaning, authority, stability—is taken on by the context and by the subjects who inhabit it. The work is no longer what is shown, but what is continuously negotiated.
The imaginary object at the center of the circle functions as a catalyst: it does not represent something, but activates a series of projections that make it operative while it remains absent. Its effectiveness does not depend on visibility, but on its capacity to organize a shared symbolic space. It is within this space that the work takes shape, in the form of relations, discourses, and expectations.
When a materialization occurs, it does not clarify the work, but reduces it. The physical form is not the origin of the process, but one of its possible outcomes, often the least relevant. Once it appears, the object occupies a position already defined, inheriting meanings that are not intrinsic to it, but retroactively assigned.
—
At this point, it becomes readily apparent that the exhibition assumes the form of a placeholder: a device that occupies a position and immediately activates its consequences. The placeholder, the object we choose to place, organizes the exhibition space as a field of relations, within which expectations, projections, and interpretations become operative.
The work emerges within this field as an effect of the interactions generated by the exhibition. The viewer participates in the construction of the experience through their gaze, their movements, and their interpretive decisions. The exhibition acts as a structure that renders this process visible.
Every exhibition element functions as a variable in an ongoing test. Texts, images, voids, and cues contribute to defining an open system in which the viewer’s reactions acquire formal value. The placeholder operates as a measuring instrument for the production of meaning. The exhibition experience coincides with the test itself, and its duration corresponds to the activation of the device. Within this space, the image takes shape as the result of a continuous negotiation between context and gaze.
The exhibition thus takes shape as a site of verification, in which the work manifests as a shared process in constant redefinition.
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.
Dear M,
1. Have you ever tried staring at yourself in the mirror for more than half an hour? You start to see strange things.
2. This is just one of the principles of the act of observing.
Only when we are truly looking can we transform the reality in front of us. And now, in the persistence and obsession, we can find this principle of distortion amplified.
So, can you see anything? Because here, in the close-up view, objects have lost their contours.
Francesco De Prezzo operates within a radically liminal perceptual space, where experiencing the artwork is intimately tied to its apparent disappearance. Perception here is never a passive or linear act; instead, it involves a “derivative” engagement, unfolding through minimal traces, subtle clues, and intentional suggestions carefully constructed by the context encompassing the artwork, the observer, and the dynamic of the viewing experience itself. What the artist triggers is not merely an absence or an erasure but rather a subliminal and paradoxical presence that persists in the space between reality and simulation. Within this framework, the artwork is perceived even before it is rationally understood. It reveals itself most clearly when viewers experience unease or tension stemming from the uncertainty between what they see and what they are told, creating a perceptual friction that compels observers to inhabit an indefinite, uncertain space.
Consequently, the artwork assumes its definitive form through the cognitive process of the viewer, whose perception simultaneously actualizes and preserves it. The radical essence of Francesco De Prezzo's practice lies precisely in redefining the aesthetic experience as a collective mental event: the perception of the artwork is never separated from its surrounding documentation, nor from the narrative, oral, video, or photographic, that endures beyond the artwork’s apparent physical dissolution. Thus, the artist returns to perception the responsibility and power to continuously define, preserve, and shape what otherwise seems irretrievably elusive.