Photography is not dead: it has transformed. It has merged its identity with other artistic forms and media in order to adapt and survive global changes. Photography has always, more than any other media, fulfilled the mission of recording and visually narrating the world, so in order to best express contemporary complexity, it has become necessary to combine multiple forms. However, living in a historical moment of constant and rapid change, it is not surprising that the artistic community feels the need to investigate and ask itself: what is photography in today’s reality? How can artists relate to the practice of photography in a conscious way with respect to the background of the action itself? What are the links with its original roots?
Jacopo Benassi, “Jacopo Benassi Libero!”, Fondazione Palazzo Ducale, (2025), installation view, Fondazione Palazzo Ducale, Genova, 2025, Ph. credits Andrea Rossetti, courtesy Palazzo Ducale Genova e l’artista
An answer can be found in the case of Jacopo Benassi (La Spezia, 1970) whose hybrid practice refuses rigid definitions and has been composed over the years in a recognisable style experimentally linking the medium of photography with performance, music, installation and sculpture. The solo exhibition, Jacopo Benassi Libero!, in the Loggia degli Abati of the Palazzo Ducale in Genoa is a large-scale display of the artist’s research, consisting of works from the last seven years, together with new products from the period of residence in the palazzo itself.
Jacopo Benassi, “Jacopo Benassi Libero!”, Fondazione Palazzo Ducale, (2025), installation view, Fondazione Palazzo Ducale, Genova, 2025, Ph. credits Andrea Rossetti, courtesy Palazzo Ducale Genova e l’artista
The exhibition focuses on the artist’s personal development both in terms of style – which lies in the use of flash, cancelling out the depth of field of the images and thus giving a raw and direct look to the disparate subjects in a mirror of underground culture – and in terms of themes and messages: for Jacopo Benassi, every image is also matter and object. Printed in different sizes, superimposed on each other, painted and bound with straps, they become three-dimensional installations and collages that physically confront the observer, breaking down the idea of photography. The tension between two-dimensionality and volume is also broken by the presence of plaster casts, pieces of glass and heavy metal structures that open up a critical-radical space for reflecting on photography as a terrain for structural questions about seeing, representing and performing the image.
Jacopo Benassi, “The Storm Before the Calm”, 2024, carta fotografica fine art, fine art paper, legno, tela, acrilico, vetro, cintura, 150 x 200 cm, courtesy l’artista e Mai 36 Galerie, Zurich
It is not simply a matter of extending the expressive/artistic potential of the medium towards other languages according to an interdisciplinary logic, but rather of operating a methodological deconstruction of photographic action and its dual technical and ideological dimension. Photography reflects on the relationship between image, support and context, in doing so it mixes with other media, thus transforming itself into an object with its own spatiality and materiality. His practice is a process of redefining hierarchies and stratifications; the artist «fighting against the condemnation of photography», intends to destabilise the production, circulation and reception of everyday images.
Jacopo Benassi, “Jacopo Benassi Libero!”, Fondazione Palazzo Ducale, (2025), installation view, Fondazione Palazzo Ducale, Genova, 2025, Ph. credits Andrea Rossetti, courtesy Palazzo Ducale Genova e l’artista
The works often feature multiple images, compacted between the wood of the imposing frames and the system of straps and harnesses; in this way, Jacopo Benassi not only transforms photography into an object, but also creates a stratification that conceals a more complex reflection on multiplicity. In times of hyperproduction and hypervisibility of images, the artist carries out a veritable semiotic sabotage: deconstructing the practice of photography to restore a sort of experimental power to it, making its capacity for transformation and hybridisation the main subject. The act of photography thus becomes a critical, obsessive and furious act, but at the same time disciplined and controlled. The relevance of Jacopo Benassi’s works lies in this liminal zone, where gaze and tactility overlap in a practice that is always poised between being seen and being questioned through 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 emerging critic and curator. She graduated first in Art History at Ca’ Foscari University in Venice, and then she obtained a master’s degree at NABA – Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti in Milan. She has been collaborating with Juliet Art Magazine for a long time and, at the same time, she carries out her independent curatorial practice; her research and interest mainly tends towards works of moving images and new Media within the contemporary art system.
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