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LIMINAL FIGURES
In The Right to Appear (2026), Francesco De Prezzo radically confronts the relationship between the artwork, its image, and the systems that control its circulation. The work consists of a framed contract through which the artist transfers to the collector the exclusive right to authorize or deny any reproduction of the artwork’s image.
At a time in which an artwork’s life unfolds almost entirely through photographic reproduction—often even before it is encountered physically—De Prezzo questions the automatism that binds an artwork to its image. The contract states that:
• no image of the work may be produced or circulated without the owner’s written approval
• any exhibition, archive, catalogue, or online platform must obtain formal permission
• the visibility of the work is no longer a technical matter, but an authorized, deliberate, and accountable act
As a result, The Right to Appear becomes an artwork that actively governs the very existence of its image.
This decision places the collector in an unprecedented position, transforming them into an unwitting curator,a mediator of the visible, someone who determines whether the work may “appear” in the world or remain invisible. By influencing the work’s public perception, the contract becomes a reflection on the power that regulates what is allowed to be seen and what remains outside the field of vision.
The intervention aligns coherently with Francesco De Prezzo’s broader practice, which has long explored the transformative dimension of the image within the documentary gesture—whether through painting, photography, or installation. His research has existed for years in a state of tension between creation and erasure, between manifestation and substitution of the artistic object, interrogating the unstable nature of documentation and its dialectical relationship with the viewer’s gaze.
Within this trajectory, The Right to Appear emerges as a natural extension: here, documentation is no longer an outcome, but an active variable, controlled, contested, and destabilized through legal means. The contract becomes an artistic device that redefines the relationship between artwork and image, assigning new models of presence and new modes of existence within the ecosystem of contemporary art.
LIMINAL FIGURES
In The Right to Appear (2026), Francesco De Prezzo radically confronts the relationship between the artwork, its image, and the systems that control its circulation. The work consists of a framed contract through which the artist transfers to the collector the exclusive right to authorize or deny any reproduction of the artwork’s image.
At a time in which an artwork’s life unfolds almost entirely through photographic reproduction—often even before it is encountered physically—De Prezzo questions the automatism that binds an artwork to its image. The contract states that:
• no image of the work may be produced or circulated without the owner’s written approval
• any exhibition, archive, catalogue, or online platform must obtain formal permission
• the visibility of the work is no longer a technical matter, but an authorized, deliberate, and accountable act
As a result, The Right to Appear becomes an artwork that actively governs the very existence of its image.
This decision places the collector in an unprecedented position, transforming them into an unwitting curator,a mediator of the visible, someone who determines whether the work may “appear” in the world or remain invisible. By influencing the work’s public perception, the contract becomes a reflection on the power that regulates what is allowed to be seen and what remains outside the field of vision.
The intervention aligns coherently with Francesco De Prezzo’s broader practice, which has long explored the transformative dimension of the image within the documentary gesture—whether through painting, photography, or installation. His research has existed for years in a state of tension between creation and erasure, between manifestation and substitution of the artistic object, interrogating the unstable nature of documentation and its dialectical relationship with the viewer’s gaze.
Within this trajectory, The Right to Appear emerges as a natural extension: here, documentation is no longer an outcome, but an active variable, controlled, contested, and destabilized through legal means. The contract becomes an artistic device that redefines the relationship between artwork and image, assigning new models of presence and new modes of existence within the ecosystem of contemporary art.