Benni Bosetto wins the first edition of the PART Prize for artists under 40

The City of Rimini and the San Patrign Foundation announce the winners of the first edition of the Premio Artisti Italiani PART, a biennial award for young contemporary art talents under the age of forty from Italy or residing in Italy: first runner-up is Benni Bosetto (Merate, 1987) with the work Doctor Said I Might Go Blind. It Helped Me See More Clearly. Feb.15, 2022, 17:58; the runner-up is Giangiacomo Rossetti (Milan, 1989), with Untitled (light sequence); the third prize is awarded ex aequo to Binta Diaw (Milan, 1995) with Paysage Corporel VII and to Beatrice Marchi (Gallarate, 1986) with Amiche Forever.

The winners were selected from the 12 finalists of the first edition by the committee of supporters of the Prize and the Mayor of Rimini with the following reasons: “Considering the quality of all the works presented by the finalists, who were selected among the most innovative artists on the Italian scene; considering that the Prize aims to support the art talents of our times, whether Italian or resident in Italy, and that it aims to extend the offer of artistic content of the San Patrignano Foundation Collection by increasing it; considering also that the Collection itself was born as an economic reserve, we decided to award the prizes taking into account also the fact that some artists have already distinguished themselves with exhibitions in prestigious public institutions or private galleries not only Italian, but also of international scope. To Benni Bosetto goes the first prize for proposing a work that combines research and tradition through an elegant technique and a language of great expressive power, capable of leading the viewer to reflect on the complexity of the human being. To Giangiacomo Rossetti goes the second prize for demonstrating an ability to reread the past in current forms, without renouncing spiritual suggestions and leading the viewer to ask questions about themes such as loneliness and the relationship with oneself and others. Binta Diaw is a third runner-up ex aequo for her ability to narrate highly relevant social phenomena. The young artist, through a photograph of her own body on which rows of small and delicate tomatoes are drawn in chalk, bears witness to the suffering and pain caused by the systems of human exploitation in the crops of southern Italy run by the caporalato. Beatrice Marchi is third runner-up ex aequo as with the work presented, one of her first videos, she investigates with a technique of immediate fruition complex themes such as the definition of identity, human relationships and the search for approval.”

The winners will be awarded a cash sum of Euro 10,000 for the first runner-up, Euro 6,000 for the second runner-up and Euro 4,000 for the third runner-up. The works of the winning artists will become part of the San Patrignano Collection, according to the endowment model on which the Collection is based, and will be exhibited at PART. Benni Bosetto, Costanza Candeloro, Caterina De Nicola, Binta Diaw, Lorenza Longhi, Beatrice Marchi, Diego Marcon, Daniele Milvio, Margherita Raso, Andrea Romano, Giangiacomo Rossetti and Davide Stucchi are the twelve finalists of the first edition, chosen by the selection committee composed of Edoardo Bonaspetti, Lucrezia Calabrò Visconti and Francesco Garutti; they were the finalists for the prize and are featured in an exhibition inside PART Palazzi dell’Arte Rimini extended until Sunday, Oct. 9.

The PART Italian Artists Prize is the brainchild of Patrizia Sandretto Re Rebaudengo and Giuseppe Iannaccone. It can count on a committee of supporters, composed of Francesca Bazoli, Diana Bracco, Carlo Cimbri, Paolo Clerici, Laura Colnaghi, Alberta Ferretti, Giuseppe Iannaccone, Daniela Memmo, Gilda Moratti, Letizia Moratti, Clarice Pecori Giraldi, Polissena Perrone, Patrizia Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Francesca Scaroni, Roberto Spada, Carlo Traglio, Francesca Tronchetti Provera and Flavio Valeri.

The Premio Artisti Italiani PART aspires to support emerging Italian contemporary art and to nourish the Collection and the striking spaces of PART with works of great quality selected through a dynamic device that acts to support the best Italian artistic practice under 40 and with the involvement of the most talented curators, drawing an unprecedented virtuous path between art, territory and solidarity.

The winning work, Doctor Said I Might Go Blind. It Helped Me See More Clearly. Feb.15, 2022, 17:58 by Benni Bosetto, is a complex pencil drawing on muffled silk takes the viewer into an intimate yet metaphysical space. It is a work that was created with the intention of reflecting on the nature of distraction, understood as that state of mind that allows for unexpected connections between the swinging moments of concentration and drift. The work serves as a container for “divinely useless” experiences, escaping gravity and tending to rise to an otherworldly dimension, a hidden, somewhat playful language through which to feel constantly off track. Inspired by the surreal iconography of grotesques, the drawing represents a kind of hybrid machine that contains and functions through bodily fluids, genitalia, vegetables, multiplicity of human beings, unicellulars, animals, sweets, kittens, visceral parasites, and gemstone jewelry whose interconnections are visible through tubular links that resemble veins, molecular or biomechanical networks that pass through their orifices forming a single living ecosystem that harks back to the celibate machines described by Michel Carrouges but adapted to a more compositional vision. What the characters represented are operating, when they are not absorbed in some reflection or perhaps in a vacuum are a series of ritual gestures and self-care exercises that reveal the centrality of the body as the origin of perception. The title is an everyday diary fragment, extracted from an article that has distracted the artist’s mind, and suggests that meaning lies between the interstices of reality.

“Benni Bosetto’s artistic practice,” the organizers of the prize make known, “investigates the human condition by probing the role of rituals in today’s society. Abandoning traditional notions of time and space and using a pre-logical visual language, Bosetto appeals to an unconscious collective memory, rereading the concept of body vaporization and loss of identity, its transcending the space-time dimension, becoming an image of perpetual becoming and movement. In his works corporeality dissolves becoming part of other species, other genres and other times that hold and reconnect in an eternal narrative. Reality breaks into an assemblage composed of multiplicities, reiterating that human being is first and foremost compost, being with others.”

Benni Bosetto lives and works in Milan. A graduate of the Brera Academy of Fine Arts in Milan, she studied at the Sandberg Instituut in Amsterdam. Solo exhibitions include: MAMbo, Bologna and Campoli Presti, Paris (2022); ADA, Rome (2021); Almanac, Turin (2020); Kunstraum, London (2019); Tile Project Space, Milan (2017). Group exhibitions include MAXXI L’Aquila (2022); Campoli Presti, Paris (2021); Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Rome (2021); Quadriennale di Roma (2020); Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Guarene (2020); Villa Medici, Rome (2019); OGR, Turin (2019); MAMbo, Bologna (2019); Fondazione Baruchello, Rome (2019); DAMA, Turin (2016); De Appel Art Center, Amsterdam (2016). Benni Bosetto was awarded the Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant in 2020.

Pictured: Benni Bosetto, Doctor Said I Might Go Blind. It Helped Me See More Clearly. Feb.15, 2022 , 17:58 (2022; pencil on silk, cloth, wadding, wood, and iron, 80 x 55 x 4 cm). Courtesy of the artist and Campoli Presti, Paris. Photo by Henrik Blomqvist

Benni Bosetto wins the first edition of the PART Prize for artists under 40

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