CHOOSE ARTIST
Robert Breer, Paul Chan, Martha Colburn, Thomas Demand, Edison Manufacturing Company, Fleischer Studios, Brent Green, George Griffin, Ezra Johnson, Bill T. Jones and OpenEnded Group, William Kentridge, Avish Khebrehzadeh, Laleh Khorramian, Maria Lassnig, Jennifer and Kevin McCoy, Joshua Mosley, Oscar Muñoz, Jacco Olivier, Raymond Pettibon, Robert Pruitt, Christine Rebet, Mary Reid Kelley, Lotte Reiniger, Robin Rhode, Hiraki Sawa, Berni Searle, Cindy Sherman, Federico Solmi, Dziga Vertov, Kara Walker- Federico Solmi
- Douche Bag City, 2010
- 15 video animations, LCD panels, custom-made frames; continuous loop; 8 ft. x 14 ft.
Dimensions Variable
Collaborator: Russell Lowe
Courtesy of the artist, LMAK Projects, New York, ADN Gallery, Barcelona, and Jerome Zodo Contemporary, Milan.
ABOUT THIS WORK
In Douche Bag City, Federico Solmi appropriates the format of first-person-shooter video games to offer a critique of corporate mentality. Dick Richman, the protagonist in his film, negotiates a landscape of urban decay that is populated with symbolic demons. Solmi’s graphic style is based upon drawings that are digitally animated by his collaborator, 3-D designer Russell Lowe. These works also exhibit a kinship with graphic novels whose gritty narratives are mirrored in Solmi’s work as well.
ABOUT FEDERICO SOLMI
Self-taught New York based artist Federico Solmi was born in Bologna, Italy in 1973. The artist produces humorous, crude, and absurd dystopian narratives that serve as derisive critiques of contemporary society. Borrowing images from pop culture and combining them with various historical references, Solmi satirizes religion, the pornography industry, wall street, and the art world. His work has been shown at institutions such as the Centre Pompidou in Paris; Reina Sofia National Museum in Madrid; Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin; the National Center for Contemporary Art in Moscow; and The Drawing Center in New York. Solmi’s work was also featured in the 26th Kassel Documentary Film & Video Festival in 2009 and he received a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship in that year.