Artist: Francesco De Prezzo
Exhibition title: Placeholder Sculptures
Venue: FORM Space, Wageningen, The Netherlands
Date: June 19 – July 25, 2023
Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and FORM Space, Wageningen
Doesn’t the propensity to define, close off, schematize, or rather to categorise, coincide with a distinct Western push for ‘visualization’?
Is there a juncture where a sculpture blurs into a photograph, where a silkscreen print retains the tactile nature akin to a painting,
or where an empty space would seem to appear as an already set up exhibition, challenging the objectivity of a sculpture?
It’s much like a game of Chinese whispers, remember? That game where a message embarks on one end and lands on the other, with distortions and “collateral” additions.
Perhaps, this phenomenon is also inherent in visuals. The collective perception of any artistic context is shaped by its exhibition stages.
How does an image of a sculpture find its way to my gaze?
Through an ‘exhibition view’.
Perhaps, this is the realm that I need to probe further into.”
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Form is glad to anounce “Placeholder Sculptures”, our new project with Francesco De Prezzo.
De Prezzo’s work examines some experiential concepts of artistic production, testing the way in which objects and works of art interact with our vision.
His practice is generally characterised by an idea of erasure of the subject to exploring the role of the viewer as a complicit figure in a process of construction and fruition of the visible.
In this project, the artist work with some placeholder elements, rather than actual works, focusing on a layout rather than a set-up.
The large space is transformed into an active context, in which it is not clear whether something has already happened or is yet to happen.
The feeling is that of being in front of a large mock-up, where sculptures formed by closed photographic tripods mark some strategic positions in space,
as if indicating the hypothetical position of future works.
