Jacopo Benassi at Palazzo Ducale, Genoa

Jacopo Benassi - Libero

Opening July 12

With the most extensive exhibition ever dedicated to his work, Palazzo Ducale delves into the world of Jacopo Benassi—named Artist of the Year by Artribune magazine—featuring all his most iconic subjects: from portraits to underground music venues, from the most ordinary everyday objects to fragments of the natural world.

The exhibition focuses on the artist’s recent production, highlighting the key stages that led to the development of his distinctive, complex, and personal visual language fusion of photography, sculpture, and performance. Through a series of large-scale installations that intertwine some of Benassi’s best-known pieces with previously unseen works, the show offers a profound reflection on the role of photography today and its ability to endure and engage with the contemporary.

Images are cut, overlapped, inverted, and hidden within a display specifically conceived for the spaces of Palazzo Ducale, encouraging visitors to seek out their own perspective while simultaneously challenging their expectations. In an age of hyper-visibility, Benassi paradoxically employs photography as an ambiguous and opaque tool—one that doesn’t simply make the world visible but fractures it into a series of obscure and unpredictable visions, poised on the threshold between appearance and disappearance.

The project is preceded by the artist’s residency at Palazzo Ducale, resulting from a call for proposals launched by the Italian Ministry of Culture. The residency, curated by Associazione Blu Breeding and Learning Unit—winner of the selection—will lead to the creation of a photographic work that will be included in the exhibition and later donated to the Villa Croce Museum of Contemporary Art. During the residency, Jacopo Benassi will also lead public talks, workshops with students, and a live performance.