Giovanni Longo has been awarded the Inside Art Special Prize at this year’s Talent Prize, one of Italy’s most prestigious awards for young contemporary artists.

Organised by Inside Art magazine, the Talent Prize recognises innovative projects and offers a network of support and visibility for young artists, promoting contemporary artistic research at both the national and international level. This accolade celebrates Longo’s distinctive artistic vision and his ability to transform materials and concepts into compelling visual narratives.

Giovanni Longo’s practice intertwines existential questions with local processes, finding its primary field of action in the Calabrian rivers. For over twenty years, the artist has collected wood shaped by the currents, transforming it into anatomical structures or form archives that transcend their original locations to inhabit exhibition spaces. The project Like a Dam (form archive) preserves this material according to visual and morphological criteria, functioning as a living archive and poetic device. Poised between recovery and intervention, Longo’s practice reveals a quiet resistance to artificial contemporaneity, turning even the smallest natural fragment into a testament of care and metamorphosis.

This year’s overall winner was Guglielmo Maggini, with Silvia Bigi and Federico Montaresi taking second and third place. Finalists included Jimmy Milani, Federica Rugnone, Meletios Meletiou, Andrea Mauti, Federica Mariani, Anouk Laure Chambaz, and Matteo Pizzolante. As every year, special prizes were also awarded: Ginevra Petrozzi (GNAMC Special Prize), Giovanni Longo (Inside Art Special Prize), and Marco Rossetti (AMPA Special Prize). The jury also granted a special mention to Leonardo Petrucci.

The winner, finalists, and special prize recipients will, as usual, take part in the Talent Prize group exhibition, which will open this December at the National Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art in Rome.