Attimi Fondamentali

"Inhabiting different roles – such as writer, photographer, performer, musician, designer, sculptor – for Riccardo Benassi seems to be a productive and genuine method to meet people, to open up the spectrum of possibilities for new encounters, collaborations, and productions. The gap, the interstice, is the territory for his actions. 
It seems evident that, today, one's role as a hermetic professional has become, at least in the field of cultural production, increasingly insignificant. What counts, at the end of the day, is a recognizable product, whether this is an actual artwork, a book, a building, a conference, or a curated show. The question, however, that arises is what are the mechanisms that make this work possible, what are the variables that have produced this work and how can one generate an integrated distribution of its core idea and knowledge, which has been produced along its becoming." (Markus Miessen, excerpt from Never Take Final Sides. On Riccardo Benassi's Practice, 2012)
Published for his solo show at Museo Marino Marini in Florence, Attimi Fondamentali by Riccardo Benassi develops through heterogeneous contributions and reflections – provided for the occasion by the writer and philosopher Franco “Bifo” Berardi, the architects Gian Piero Frassinelli and Markus Miessen, the artist Liam Gillick and the chief curator of the Florentine institution, Alberto Salvadori – that attempt to challenge a technicist, professionalizing view of the role of the artist. The triggering of these mechanisms is based on the artist’s desire to activate experiences through which freedom of thought and action can move towards new experiential limits, as the most effective tool – in Benassi’s view – for artistic expression and investigation.