Tales past pictures: Jacopo Benassi’s solo exhibition in Genoa

Photography is just not lifeless: it has reworked. It has merged its identification with different creative kinds and media to be able to adapt and survive world adjustments. Photography has at all times, greater than every other media, fulfilled the mission of recording and visually narrating the world, so to be able to finest categorical up to date complexity, it has develop into mandatory to mix a number of kinds. However, residing in a historic second of fixed and fast change, it’s not stunning that the creative group feels the necessity to examine and ask itself: what’s pictures in at the moment’s actuality? How can artists relate to the observe of pictures in a aware method with respect to the background of the motion itself? What are the hyperlinks with its authentic roots?

Jacopo Benassi, “Jacopo Benassi Libero!”, Fondazione Palazzo Ducale, (2025), set up view, Fondazione Palazzo Ducale, Genova, 2025, Ph. credit Andrea Rossetti, courtesy Palazzo Ducale Genova e l’artista

An reply will be discovered within the case of Jacopo Benassi (La Spezia, 1970) whose hybrid observe refuses inflexible definitions and has been composed over time in a recognisable type experimentally linking the medium of pictures with efficiency, music, set up and sculpture. The solo exhibition, Jacopo Benassi Libero!, within the Loggia degli Abati of the Palazzo Ducale in Genoa is a large-scale show of the artist’s analysis, consisting of works from the final seven years, along with new merchandise from the interval of residence within the palazzo itself.

Jacopo Benassi, “Jacopo Benassi Libero!”, Fondazione Palazzo Ducale, (2025), set up view, Fondazione Palazzo Ducale, Genova, 2025, Ph. credit Andrea Rossetti, courtesy Palazzo Ducale Genova e l’artista

The exhibition focuses on the artist’s private improvement each when it comes to type – which lies in the usage of flash, cancelling out the depth of discipline of the photographs and thus giving a uncooked and direct look to the disparate topics in a mirror of underground tradition – and when it comes to themes and messages: for Jacopo Benassi, each picture can also be matter and object. Printed in several sizes, superimposed on one another, painted and sure with straps, they develop into three-dimensional installations and collages that bodily confront the observer, breaking down the thought of pictures. The pressure between two-dimensionality and quantity can also be damaged by the presence of plaster casts, items of glass and heavy metallic constructions that open up a critical-radical house for reflecting on pictures as a terrain for structural questions on seeing, representing and performing the picture.

Jacopo Benassi, “The Storm Before the Calm”, 2024, carta fotografica advantageous artwork, advantageous artwork paper, legno, tela, acrilico, vetro, cintura, 150 x 200 cm, courtesy l’artista e Mai 36 Galerie, Zurich

It is just not merely a matter of extending the expressive/creative potential of the medium in direction of different languages in accordance with an interdisciplinary logic, however quite of working a methodological deconstruction of photographic motion and its twin technical and ideological dimension. Photography displays on the connection between picture, assist and context, in doing so it mixes with different media, thus remodeling itself into an object with its personal spatiality and materiality. His observe is a strategy of redefining hierarchies and stratifications; the artist «preventing towards the condemnation of pictures», intends to destabilise the manufacturing, circulation and reception of on a regular basis photos.

Jacopo Benassi, “Jacopo Benassi Libero!”, Fondazione Palazzo Ducale, (2025), set up view, Fondazione Palazzo Ducale, Genova, 2025, Ph. credit Andrea Rossetti, courtesy Palazzo Ducale Genova e l’artista

The works usually characteristic a number of photos, compacted between the wooden of the imposing frames and the system of straps and harnesses; on this method, Jacopo Benassi not solely transforms pictures into an object, but in addition creates a stratification that conceals a extra complicated reflection on multiplicity. In instances of hyperproduction and hypervisibility of photos, the artist carries out a veritable semiotic sabotage: deconstructing the observe of pictures to revive a form of experimental energy to it, making its capability for transformation and hybridisation the primary topic. The act of pictures thus turns into a vital, obsessive and livid act, however on the similar time disciplined and managed. The relevance of Jacopo Benassi’s works lies on this liminal zone, the place gaze and tactility overlap in a observe that’s at all times poised between being seen and being questioned by evolution.

Irene Follador

Info:

Jacopo Benassi Libero!
curated by Francesco Zanot
12/07/2025 – 14/09/2025
Palazzo Ducale – Loggia degli Abati
Piazza Giacomo Matteotti, 9 – Genova (GE)
Fondazione Palazzo Ducale

Irene Follador (Venice, 1997) is an rising critic and curator. She graduated first in Art History at Ca’ Foscari University in Venice, after which she obtained a grasp’s diploma at NABA – Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti in Milan. She has been collaborating with Juliet Art Magazine for a very long time and, on the similar time, she carries out her impartial curatorial observe; her analysis and curiosity primarily tends in direction of works of transferring photos and new Media throughout the up to date artwork system.