Benni Bosetto at ADA

Artist: Benni Bosetto

Exhibition title: 00 0 00

Venue: ADA, Rome, Italy

Date: March 6 – May 8, 2021

Photography: Roberto Apa / all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and ADA, Rome

Remember, man, that thou art dust, and unto dust thou shalt return, G. 3,19

On 21/06/1907 Hilma Af Klimt writes the symbol 00 0 00 in the twenty-sixth page of her notes, to define a concept of origin, drawn not to comfort but capable of repeating itself, chaotically and dangerously. Here the zero does not represent a linear starting point, but a repeated and compound element in a perhaps endless movement. 00 0 00 is a world where the numbers after the zero do not exist and where the concept of accumulation disappears, leaving only to the elementary essence of things. Bosetto re-elaborates the concept of origin which does not create in image and likeness, but combines and mixes, reducing every living being to mud, earth and ash. The origin thus insinuates itself in every vital and temporal fragment with a compostist approach, in a tangle of forms and existences, destined to alternate both composition and decomposition and generated to dissolve and finally mix with each other.

Benni Bosetto reconstructs at ADA a place abandoned from everyday life where debris, dust and bacteria seem to have inhabited the room for an indefinite time, creating a new ecosystem, fed by those who pass through it. The exhibited sculptures eschew the concept of temporality, simulating a superorganism merged with the environment, free from the container and the form. Their features recall primordial and elementary forms that narrate a constantly repeated process in 00 0 00, where each creature is in kinship with the others. 00 0 00 reinterprets the myth of reincarnation in a metanarrative key, staging an indefinite hyperorganism which becomes surface, object, body and environment at the same time.

Benni Bosetto (Milan, 1987), lives and works in Milan. She graduated at the Academy of Fine Arts of Brera, Milan, IT, and she studied at the Sandberg Instituut, Amsterdam, NL.

Recent and upcoming solo exhibitions include: 2021 – ADA, Rome, IT. 2020 – Almanac, Turin, IT. 2019 – Kunstraum, with Xenia Perek, curated by Giulia Civardi, London, UK; Villa Il Cerretino, Prato, IT. 2018 – Fonderia Battaglia, Milan, IT; ADA, Rome, IT. 2017 – Tile Project Space, Milan, IT.

Recent group exhibitions include: 2021 – Galleria Civica di Trento, curated by M. De Pilati, G. Lorenzoni, F. Mazzoleni, Trento, IT (upcoming); Fondazione del Monte, curated by Claudio Musso, Maura Pozzati, Bologna, IT (upcoming); Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna, curated by Cristiana Collu with Cecilia Canziani, Lara Conte, Paola Ugolini, Rome, IT; 2020 – Quadriennale d’arte 2020, curated by Sara Cosulich and Stefano Collicelli, Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Rome, IT; Palazzo Re Rebaudengo, curated by Alison Karasyk, Camille Regli and Katie Simpson, Guarene, IT. 2019 – Villa Medici, curated by Pier Paolo Pancotto, Rome, IT; Artissima Special Project, curated by Lucrezia Calabrò Visconti and Guido Costa, Turin, IT; Horst – Asiat site, curated by Evelyn Simons, Vilvoorde, BE. 2018 – OGR, performance curated by Valentina Lacinio and Samuele Piazza, Turin, IT; MAMbo, curated by Lorenzo Balbi, Bologna, IT; Fondazione Baruchello, curated by Caterina Molteni, Rome, IT. 2017 – Art Verona Collateral Project, organized by Mauro De Iorio, Verona, IT; Dome, curated by Ginevra Bria, Milan, IT; De School, curated by Femke Dekker, Laure Jaffuel and Leila Arenou, Amsterdam, NL. 2016 – DAMA, performance curated by Lorenzo Balbi, Turin, IT; De Appel Art Center, Amsterdam, NL; Marselleria, Milan, IT. 2015 – Fanta Spazio, a project by Beatrice Marchi, Milan, IT. 2014 – Il Crepaccio, Milan, IT.

Residencies include: Fonderia Artistica Battaglia (Milan, 2018); VIR Via Farini, (Milan, 2014). She has been awarded the Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant in 2020, the Fondazione Fiera Milano prize in 2019 and the Premio Termoli in 2018.