21/7/2010
Federico Solmi - Florian Grond
Two venues, Prague
Lines and Frames. Two solo show.
The Czech Centre Prague and the Vernon Gallery co-organizes an exhibition
LINES AND FRAMES, which consists of two individual exhibitions - DOUCHE BAG
CITY by the italian artist based in USA Federico Solmi and THE FINE LINE by
German artist Florian Grond.
DOUCHE BAG CITY
Federico Solmi (Italy, 1973 lives and works in US)
The exhibition Douche Bag City, by New York based artist Federico Solmi will
include a selection of video animations created between 2005 and 2010,
currently an installation exhibited at Santa Fe's Eighth International
Biennial in New Mexico (SITE).
Douche Bag City is the title of the exhibition's main video-installation.
This latest creation of Federico Solmi provides us with a clear idea of his
poetic and creative method.
Presented as a first-person-shooter video game on 15 custom-framed LCD
screens, Douche Bag City appears, at first as a satire of the world
economic crisis, a dark portrait of Wall Street greed. However, it could be
equally seen as an imaginary city, a metaphysical space in which all figures
from Solmi's past works reappear and drift through. Douche Bag City video
installation was created in collaboration with 3D artists Russell Lowe and
Lee Gibson. Russell Lowe is a Senior Lecturer at the University of New South
Wales, in Australia, and Lee Gibson is a Senior Lecturer in Industrial
Design at Victoria University of Wellington.
'All of my works are filled with corrupt politicians, murderers, swindlers,
tyrants, porno stars, religious preachers. I want to present viewers with an
ironic but perverse vision of our times and our near future.' (Federico
Solmi)
His works are a colourful, original and obscene critique of contemporary
society and a vivid image of the debauched state it is in. They draw on a
combination of inspirations from pop art, comics, video-plays, and the
Internet to create a sneering picture of the madly chaotic world of the 21st
century. Federico Solmi works with various media such as video, drawings,
mechanical sculpture and paintings and uses light colours and a satirical
aesthetic to make a statement about the dystopian vision of our contemporary
society.
With the Douche Bag City installation, Federico Solmi formulates his darkest
and most concrete artistic vision of reality - how and why contemporary
Western culture is being propelled into irreversible decline. He explores
communal hopelessness and toys with the idea of revenge fantasy within the
framework of corporate-culture enslavement.
'The sense of tragedy that can be felt in my work comes from my inability to
embrace a culture made of false myths and moral codes.' (Federico Solmi)
The universe, which he likes to present, is a magnification of our unstable
present, which breaks into pieces, a criticism of a system that
unquestioningly approves and believes in the fragile foundations that our
culture and post-modern society are based on.
The position of Federico Solmi was not always positive. His works were
brought upon the censorship and in Italy he was condemned for the 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.
Federico Solmi's videos have been exhibited in numerous galleries and
institutions, such as Centre Pompidou in Paris, Reina Sofia Museum in
Madrid, the Drawing Center in New York, Haus der Kulturen der Welt in
Berlin, the National Center for Contemporary Art in Moscow, and at many
other locations. His work regularly appears at festivals of film and video.
He took part, for instance, in the Kassel Documentary Film and Video
Festival, The London International Animation Festival, Loop Barcelona,
IndieLisboa in Lisbon, Impakt Film, and the Video Festival in Utrecht.
-----------------
THE FINE LINE
Florian Grond (1975, Graz)
The exhibition of the German artist and scientist Florian Grond is
presenting three art videos that combine his experiences in the fields of
art and science. He explores the relationship of information and structure.
How the text provokes the images which are constructe in our minds? And on
the other hand, how visual images and the information the carry can be
deconstructed using the same principles?
Florian Grond uses the mathematical concept of space-filling curves to
artistically answer these questions.. A concept that was first related to
image theory by the philosopher Pawel Florenski 100 years ago.
Florian Grond studied chemistry in Graz, Leicester and Tübingen. At the end
of his science studies, he received a scholarship from the basic research
group ZKM (Centre for Art and Media Technology) in Karlsruhe, where he
continued his interdisciplinary
research in nonlinear dynamics and system theory. Florian Grond developed
his artistic techniques while at the ZKM and they are closely related to his
scientific background and draw upon Hans Diebner´s idea of performative
science. Since 2004, he has participated in art exhibitions in Europe, North
America and Asia. Since 2003, he has published work in academic journals in
the fields of nonlinear dynamics, sonification, and the arts and sciences
community. In 2009, Grond started working towards his PhD in the field of
sonification at CITEC Bielefeld University under the supervision of Thomas
Hermann.
'...All three works in the exhibition The Fine Line - "knitting dreams",
"hilbert02" and "along the line", are based on space-filling curves, which
have informed my artistic and scientific research for some years now.
Space-filling curves are a mathematical concept discovered about 115 years
ago. Today, they serve several purposes in computer sciences, from image
processing to database organisation.
In the latter case, their function is to linearise complex content and thus
make it easily
accessible for sequential processing. Essentially, the purpose of a
space-filling curve is to reduce data dimensionality to a single line.
For me, space-filling curves provide an inspiring metaphor for understanding
text-image relations. Space-filling curves shed light on our relations to
media of different dimensions, that is to say, of differently represented
realities. In my artworks I want to reunite these thoughts on art, science
and philosophy by using the computer as a contemporary medium, a medium that
adequately allows me to express the iterative structure of space-filling
curves, a distinctly mathematical perspective on the relationship between
form and content.' (Florian Grond)
Info: The Czech Centre Prague
Radka Labendz / Program and PR Manager
T: + 420 234 668 507
E: labendz@czech.cz
http://www.czechcentres.cz/prague
Galerie Vernon
Markéta Faustová/PR
M:+420 773 915 501
E: marketafaustova@seznam.cz
marketa.faustova@tina-b.com
http://www.galerievernon.com
Opening 22 July, 2010, 6 p.m
The Czech Centre Prague and the Vernon Gallery, Prague
open: tue/fri 10 am-6 pm, so 12 pm-6 pm
Entrance free