REPRESENT

About

​Palazzo Monti is a building that dates back to the 13th century, which initially belonged to the Maggi family. After that, it housed the hospital of Brescia and later it was acquired first by the Cassago family and then in the ‘50s by the Monti family.

The building treasures marvelous neoclassical frescos from the 1750 and its court reveals a well from the 1500 and a marble fountain from the 1700.

Palazzo Monti Residency Program was launched in March 2017 by Edoardo Monti after he spent 8 years between New York and London and it’s now an artist residency inside this ancient building in the heart of Brescia.

The project – which is independent and self-funded – selects artists from any countries and supports them with an international curatorial team made of members from New York, Seoul and several parts of Italy.

The program gives the artists the chance to enjoy the evocative locations of the building, in order to favor exchange, confrontation and contemporary art promotion.

On its second edition, Palazzo Monti Residency Program is happy to host “Represent”, the end of residency exhibition by Francesco De Prezzo.

In its most literal sense, the term representation acquires the meaning of re-presentation – that is making something present again.

The title of the show “Represent” refers both to the act of representing and to the content of the representative action itself, the image that becomes object in order to be communicated to someone else.

The works by Francesco De Prezzo (*1994) are the result of an action that copies from reality elements borrowed by the surrounding environment and portions of its studio.

His subjects pass onto the canvas, giving life to faithful reproductions that wonder about the spatial relation between each other and the one between the observer and the observed object.

After this first phase comes a covering action, through which the images resolve their authenticity in a process of self-negation. Thick layers of white polish or solvent applied on the finished forms wipe out most of their comprehension, keeping the integrity of just a few fragments.

The big uniform layers of rolled color that overwrite the preexisting image – as does the melted polish – transform the canvas into an open space, full of possibilities where nothing seems to undermine the circumstances of change.

De Prezzo rethink the relation between space and dimension and raises questions on the dynamics of the fruition of art, giving them a new interpretation.

His gesture is quiet and silent, transforming the eloquence of the reproduced object into a link between concealment and manifestation. It runs from painting emphasis and quests for a natural conclusion in the absence of noise, which – in fact – hides by unveiling. And by doing this, it finally invites the observer into a silent complicity.

- Marialuisa Pastò