UNISEX – Fetishism and Lemon Soda

Jacopo Benassi was born in La Spezia, Italy (1970), where he lives and works.

The artist begins to move in the world of photography in the 1980s, in particular through environments linked to underground music. Over the years his research became wider and began to include portraits and self-portraits, performances, painting, nature and the world of fashion, while maintaining, however, as a sort of constant, a very intimate and introspective way of taking pictures. Jacopo has participated in various exhibitions and many events in institutions such as the Centro Pecci in Prato, Tate in London and the Palais De Tokyo in Paris. He has produced numerous publications including books and fanzines, among the others FAGS edited by nero, The Belt by Skira, Bologna Portraits by Damiani, The Eyes Can See What The Mouth Can Not Say by Peperoni books, Gli aspetti irrilevanti by Mondadori. He has collaborated with directors and writers such as Paolo Sorrentino, Daniele Cipri, Asia Argento and Maurizio Maggiani and has followed and created various advertising campaigns in the fashion sector. Jacopo has also followed the cultural program of Btomic, a famous club in La Spezia, for which he has created self- produced editorial projects related to the alternative music scene proposed by the venue.

Despite the innumerable experiences he managed to be in contact with, Jacopo has managed to transversally crossing different fields and moving between heterogeneous disciplines, the way in which he shoots remains very faithful to the approach with which he began: the depth of field is canceled by the light of the flash. Benassi has made this characteristic of rapid and instinctive photography of underground cultures which often requires flash and short exposure times to portray clandestine and lightless situations his signature style, thus giving his research a raw character and powerful.

With Jacopo Benassi, photography becomes sculpture, not only because the flash cuts out the silhouettes of his subjects with precision, but because the shot itself enters into dialogue with the artist’s frames, assembled by the artist himself, which thus make each work unique and unrepeatable. Jacopo never ceases to suggest that the will to create would not exist without the will to destroy: frames burned or made with accepted wood and cut glass, a tribute to imperfection that allows us to measure the complexity and roughness of things. Assemblies of photographic, material and pictorial elements find their stability thanks to the grip of an industrial anchor belt. With them Jacopo speaks to us with a disarming courage of fragility and the constant search for balance.