«Grotesquery and fearsome exaggeration date back to depictions of mankind’s earliest idols. This sensibility surfaces regularly in Western art, notably in Leonardo’s sketches, in war critiques from Goya to Picasso and in the traumatized urgency expressed by Ensor, Munch, Grosz, and Basquiat. Extending this legacy of expressionism, Solmi’s haunting social commentaries question how the iconic status of current and historical figures, potentates and celebrities, is conferred by the masses who enable their reputations,» writes curator Kelly Gordon on Solmi’s work.

 

Counterfeit Heroes is Italian artist Federico Solmi’s solo show that will open on August 7th at the G17 space of Centro de Arte Los Galpones, in the context of Global Visions: Insights into International Moving Image Art, a program created by Backroom Caracas and curated by Kelly Gordon, with support from the Office of Public Affairs of the Embassy of the United States of America, in partnership with Hacienda La Trinidad Parque Cultural, Centro de Arte Los Galpones, Museo de Arte Cotemporáneo del Zulia (Maczul), and Foto Florida Soluciones Audiovisuales.

 

Federico Solmi (Bologna, 1973) lives and works in New York city‎. He has been a Guggenheim Fellow and is currently visiting professor at Yale University.‎ The artist’s extraordinary video-animations have been featured at the Venice Biennale, Frankfurt B3 Biennial of Moving Images, Site Santa Fe Biennial and at museums including MACBA-Museum of Contemporary Art (Barcelona), Centre Pompidou, Palais de Tokyo (Paris), Museo Reina Sofía (Madrid), Drawing Center (New York), Haifa Museum of Art (Israel), Centro Cultural Matucana 100 (Santiago), Haus der Kulturen der Welt (Berlin), OCT Contemporary Art Terminal (Shanghai), Victoria Memorial Museum (Kolkata, India), Contemporary Art Center of Rouboix, Palazzo Delle Arti (Naples), and Palazzo delle Esposizioni (Rome).‎

 

Included in Artforum’s 2015 “Critics’ Picks,” Solmi’s work has also been featured in exhibitions including‎ Kassel Documentary Film and Video Festival, London International Animation Festival, Loop in Barcelona, Utrecht’s Impakt Film and Video Festival, and the upcoming Beijing Media Art Biennale.

 

Solmi’s disturbing animations are born of his free hand and brought to life by video game creation software; this intricate, labor-intensive process fuses technology and manual painting. He deploys satire to express the harrowing dimensions of modern life—the fallacies of power, the pretensions of celebrity and the inescapability of media-conditioned mentality—. His cartoonish characters tend to move awkwardly through indecipherable, often hilarious situations, presenting a piercing criticism of the systems that we approve and trust, without questioning the fragile bases of our postmodern society and culture.

 

The Exhibition

 

 

Counterfeit Heroes is a solo show designed for two locations that comprises a selection from Solmi’s most recent work—The Brotherhood— and includes scenes from his video installation The Ballroom. The show will open first at Centro de Arte Los Galpones in Caracas and later at Maczul in Maracaibo. These exhibitions constitute Solmi’s debut in Latin America.

 

In The Brotherhood (2015), the artist parodies the iconography of the historical portrait by creating absurd and exaggerated portraits of some of the most feared and worshiped historical leaders. They are presented as members of “The Brotherhood,” an organization whose goals are to uphold chaos in the world and to promote the degeneration of the human race. Solmi portrays history as propaganda––fabricated, manipulated, and carefully devised to fit particular ideals and interests—. This scenario interrogates our knowledge of the past––sluggish, incomplete, and irresolute––, and challenges us to wonder just how much we, too, might be perpetuating myths.

 

The Ballroom (2015) presents a sardonic and irreverent universe where the most feared and beloved leaders in history are guests at a costume ball. Multiple narratives of gluttony, gossip, and other exuberances congregate in this opulent party. A superfluous display of ridiculous outfits, chockfull of medals and jewels, promotes a visual disorder that converges with the extravagant indulgences of the powerful figures. Instead of reimagining history, leaders enter the egocentric contemporary culture of celebrities.

 

Solmi’s work‎ draws inspiration from Orianna Fallaci’s observation: «There’s something missing in all writings about power: Very few are able to capture how funny it is. When they examine the horrors that power commits, the sufferings it imposes, the blood with which it stains itself, historians and political scientists always forget to highlight the ridiculous aspects of the inevitable monster and how funny they are, with their ironed uniforms, unearned medals, and invented awards.»

 

Artist’s website: federicosolmi.com