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TEXTS
LIMINAL FIGURES --- 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 --- 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.