Time - Perception - Movement

The birth of the Benelli concepts

Ever since its invention, the gun has been at man’s side, helping him to hunt for his food and defend his life, just as the concept of time has accompanied man’s thought as he tries to explain life, eternity and motion. On this argument, philosophers have produced numerous interpretations, some of them fascinating, some eccentric and others downright boring. Those that I remember begin with Plato and his still relevant warning of the cave myth and, for all I know, continue up to the present day.

The solution, anyway, is needed and if it doesn’t exist ,we might just as well not study it but perceive it. Perceive it through the stimulus of artistic intuition. I set this challenge to a group of young artists and intellectuals, all working in different fields: Giusy Rampini is a painter, Dario Cortini is a graphic engraver and Takeo Hosoe is a designer. Their task was to interpret Time and Motion, drawing on the possible artistic syntheses and trying out new ones. The natural support for these representations being the most modern and highly-prized of guns: the ARGO, renamed the R1 for the USA.

I believe that, within the limits of the task, we have created something original, capable of striking a chord with both journalists and sports fans, all men of culture and receptive to those extraordinary provocations that nature and the intellect can provide.

Benelli Armi S.p.A.
The President

The duck and the pointer
Playing with the obsessing repetition of other graphics experience, Dario Cortini rises up, from burnishing, brighter than polish silver, of this ARGO cal. 308 a sequence of images in evolution. Those images are parallel way  where a pointer transmute in a duck, running after each other, evolving them self in the other. And then, they   turn round to the beginning, and their run is timed by lighter and darker band. The relativity of the observer plays, and not little.

Dario Cortini
He was born in 1963 in Val Trompia, the valley of the arms manufacturers. In 1978 he became an apprentice engraver at the workshop of Cesare Giovanelli, with the firm intention of developing as an engraver. There, he became skilled in the use of a wide range of techniques: working with hammer and tip, burin, chisel, gold-leaf work, engraved landscapes and various kinds of ornament work. All these techniques have been called upon in his decoration and embellishing of some of the most beautiful arms to come out of Val Trompia and Urbino, as well as products for Tiffany’s in New York and commemorative works for the Vatican and the President of the Italian Republic.

The duck
Immobility and motion
Nature becoming nature
Changing forms
Loaded with meaning,
Free of detail
Sudden bursts of speed

Light, shadow, touches of art (flashes of life)
The moment is transformed
Into the rhythm of evolution,
The iris is submerged
Beneath unknown forms
The force erupts
Into space and time

Perceiving the flight
Grasping the motion
The images meet
And blend
In a series of meanings
Before coming to rest
In the static flash of immobility.

The zebras
With hints of the op art of the late twentieth century, Takeo Hosoe has derived the black lacquered surfaces of this R1 calibre 300 W, with its lines drawn in white gold.
These softly evolving lines bring forth reclining figures that both move and remain still, as the view-point changes.
An illusion of motion. A myth.

Takeo Hosoe
The son of an artist, he was born in Milan in 1975.  He studied architecture in Florence and Milan, then, in 1999, he began collaborating with the architect and designer, Marco Gaudenzi, and with his father, Isao Hosoe, an engineer and designer, on various projects of outstanding technical and aesthetic originality, such as the folding bicycle, Fluida.  The collaboration with the Gaudenzi studio continued with other projects, in both the architectural and the design field. The professional relationship with Benelli Armi began in 2004, when he was entrusted with the role of artistic consultant for the company and the role of Product Manager for exclusive products like the Concept Guns presented in this brochure.

The zebras
Only stripes and immobility
A moment of silence,
The suggestion of motion.
Animals standing still
Immortal in time.
The eye shifts
The mind moves on
The depths change, too.

Nothing, something
The images halted
By the observing eye.
The parallels chase across
Without looking at each other.
On meeting an animal
They caress its curves
Draw it without awakening it
Then hurry on without turning,
Towards their own horizon,
One that doesn’t exist.

The boars
There are thousands, millions of rock carvings that show animals in motion, but none of them represent motion through Time and Space.
I asked Giusy to represent the flight rather than the cause of it.
She has done much more than that.  With Dario’s engraving help, she has made the splendid burnishing explode on the casing of this ARGO calibre 30.06.
From out of this explosion, powerful images merely hinted at, seem either to flee or attack.
The engraving has a masterly fineness, with the experimental force of the painter perfectly complementing this most refined of traditions.
Time is immaterial”.

Giusy Rampini
Born in 1973 in Gardone Val Trompia, she quickly revealed a natural tendency towards the figurative arts. As a result, her studies promptly followed an artistic inclination, taking her to Florence and the engraving school “Il Bisonte”.  Her studies, combined with the intense life of the workshop, enabled her to acquire familiarity with numerous pictorial techniques. She came into contact with the hunting world at an early age and, despite her youth, managed with great force to transmit the techniques she had acquired in her studies to the emotions and state of mind associated with nature and the life of hunters. Her work today has achieved international renown.

Thoughts
Stopping motion
Is a contradiction in itself.
An immobile form that sums up
Motion, which suggests it,
Is something that stands between reality
And its opposite.
Form and light are altered
By evocative moments and
Create new patterns somewhere
Between the real and the imaginary.

Nothing is still. Everything passes
Nothing remains.
Art alone is stronger, is the
Only thing unmoving.
It is static, it is crystallised motion.
Figures change their shape
And the lights and the background enter
And leave, free and arabesque.
The rarest magic is form and colour
Eternally still, yet speaking of velocity.
The form we search for is far
From reality and likewise artistic form
Is far from artistic form.

Giusy Rampini

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