The year 2009 was a turbulent one for Federico Solmi, who provoked much commotion and anger in Europe with works from his video The Evil Empire, bringing upon censorship in Spain and France, which then escalated to an infamous trial in Italy for obscenity, blasphemy and offense to religion. After being labeled as a controversial artist by many European newspapers, the charges against Federico Solmi were dismissed, and he was later honored in the United States with the 2009 Guggenheim Fellowship for Video Art. He has since been invited to exhibit his work at the upcoming Santa Fe Biennale in New Mexico.
LMAKprojects is proud to present Federico Solmi’s second solo exhibition, entitled, From Uterus to Grave with no Happy Ending. This exhibition will take a look at his newest works, the video installation entitled Douche Bag City, alongside his previous videos, King Kong and the End of the World, Rocco Never Dies, The Giant and The Evil Empire series.
At the entrance of this exhibition, an inscription warns the visitor: Please abandon all your hopes and dreams before you enter this gallery. Youare in the reign of Evil and you will burn in hell with me. In fact, this exhibition proposes a vision of a present that is crumbling, of a system that approves and trusts without questioning the fragile foundation on which our culture and post-modernist society is based. From his first videos to his latest works, Federico Solmi uses a sardonic aesthetic to portray a dystopian vision of our present day society. His videos are satires about the evilness and the vices that affect contemporary society and mankind.
The artist’s technique, meticulous and complex, combines traditional hand-drawn animation with digital models, in which he utilizes computer gaming engines. The result is a unique hand-made texture within a real-time 3D framework, created with his long time New Zealand collaborator, 3D artist Russell Lowe. Russell Lowe is a Senior Lecturer at the University of New South Wales, in Australia.
The exhibition will be accompanied by a catalog with a text by Blanca De La Torre, who is currently the curator of ARTIUM Museum of Contemporary Art in Vitoria, Spain.
Federico Solmi’s work has been featured in the following museums: Centre Pompidou, Paris, Drawing Center, New York; Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin; National Center for Contemporary Art; Moscow, CA2M Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo, Madrid, Australian Center of Moving Images, Melbourne; Victoria Memorial Museum, Calcutta, India; Contemporary Art Center of Rouboix; Palazzo Delle Arti, Naples, Palazzo Delle Esposizioni, Rome. In addition, his video animations have been screened in several film and video festivals such as Kassel Documentary Film & Video Festival; Tina B, Prague; London International animation festival; Loop, Barcelona; IndieLisboa, Lisbon; Impakt festival, Utrecht.
