Federico Solmi: Escape Into The Metaverse examines the work of Federico Solmi, a leading practitioner in the genre of new media art. As a narrative and figurative artist, Solmi utilises lurid colours and satire to portray a dystopian vision of contemporary society, highlighting the contradictions and fallibilities that characterise our time. Employing video, painting, drawing, sculpture, sound and digital game design, he creates a carnivalesque virtual reality with historical and present-day world leaders – animated by computer script and motion capture performance – in a critique of Western society’s obsession with power. Inspired by real events and fabricated myths, Solmi explores, re-interprets and concocts celebrated moments in history. As reconfigured narratives, these social and political commentaries disrupt the mythologies that underpin Western society, revealing its ties to nationalism, colonialism, religion and consumerism.

The book documents Solmi’s unique process of melding traditional art practices and digital technologies in a case study of his most ambitious video-painting to date, The Bathhouse (2020). Pioneering new modes of cultural production and art experience afforded by the metaverse, Solmi’s absurd rewriting of past and present merge dark humor and a sense of the grotesque in a virtual world that indicts our own reality.

Solmi was born in 1973 to a working-class family in Bologna, Italy. He is self-trained and self-educated. In 1999, he moved to Brooklyn, New York, to pursue his career. His perspective reflects his outlook as a cultural voyeur, questioning the nationalistic and revisionist American mythologies that are often presented as fact. In 2003, Solmi began to experiment with the tools of video game design, fascinated by the parallel universe made possible by 3D graphics, which he saw as a structure to create narrative video sequences using drawings and paintings. Every visual texture is painted and scanned on the computer up to three times to achieve the intentional flickering effect. The art of Paolo Uccello, Giorgio Morandi and Giorgio di Chirico serve as references for his visual compositions, while the writings of Howard Zinn, Noam Chomsky and Oriana Fallaci serve as inspiration for his social and political commentary.

About the Authors

Lawrence Weschler is an award-winning nonfiction author. For over 20 years, Weschler worked as a staff writer at the New Yorker (1981–2002) exploring topics ranging from art and culture to politics. His politically centered books include The Passion of Poland (1984); A Miracle, A Universe: Settling Accounts with Torturers (1990); and Calamities of Exile: Three Nonfiction Novellas (1996). His “Passions and Wonders” series includes Seeing is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees: A Life of Contemporary Artist Robert Irwin (1982); David Hockney’s Cameraworks (1984); Mr. Wilson’s Cabinet of Wonder (1995); A Wanderer in the Perfect City: Selected Passion Pieces (1998); Boggs: A Comedy of Values (1999); Robert Irwin: Getty Garden (2002); Vermeer in Bosnia (2004); Everything that Rises: A Book of Convergences (2006); and Uncanny Valley: Adventures in the Narrative (2011). His most recent works include Wondercabinet: Lawrence Weschler’s Fortnightly Compendium of the Miscellaneous Diverse (2021); And How Are You, Dr. Sacks: A Biographical Memoir of Oliver Sacks (2019); “A Conversation with Liza Lou” in the Liza Lou Rizzoli Monograph (2011); True to Life: Twenty Five Years of Conversations with David Hockney (2009); Deborah Butterfield, a survey of the artist’s work at the LA Louver Gallery (2009); and Tara Donovan, the catalog for the artist’s exhibition at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston (2008). He is the twice recipient of the George Polk Award (in 1988 for Cultural Reporting and in 1992 for Magazine Reporting); recipient of the 1998 Lannan Literary Award, and winner of the 2006 National Book Critics Circle Award in Criticism.

Federico Solmi is a new media artist, best known for his sardonic video-paintings and video installations, with a multimedia practice that incorporates drawing, painting, sculpture, digital design and game design. Born in 1973 in Bologna, Italy, Solmi moved to Brooklyn, New York, in 1999, where he lives and works today.

Solmi’s work has been featured in numerous solo and group exhibitions in the US: Morris Museum, Morristown, New Jersey; Luis de Jesus Los Angeles; National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC; Rowan University Art Gallery, Glassboro, New Jersey; Times Square Arts, New York; Tarble Arts Center, Charleston, Illinois; Rochester Contemporary Art Center, Rochester, New York; Block Museum of Art, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois; and Postmasters Gallery, New York. And internationally: Ocean Flower Island Museum, Hainan Province, Danzhou, China; Galerie Kornfeld, Berlin; ADN Galeria, Barcelona; 1335MABINI, Manila; Museo de Arte Contempor�neo del ZulIa, Maracaibo, Venezuela; Haifa Museum of Art, Israel; Dino Morra Arte Contemporanea, Naples, Italy; Centro Cultural Mantucana 100, Santiago, Chile; Gleichapel, Paris; Galerie Vernon, Prague, Czech Republic; Italian Cultural Institute of Madrid, Spain; Galerie Zimmermann Kratochwill, Fraz, Austria; and Galleri SE, Bergen, Norway; as well as international art biennials and festivals.

His work is in the permanent collections of: The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC; Block Museum of Art, Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois; Tarble Art Center, Charleston, Illinois; Buckhorn Sculpture Park, Sherry and Joel Mallin Collection, Pound Ridge, New York; 21C Museum Hotels, Louisville, Kentucky; OCT Contemporary Art Terminal, Shanghai; Thoma Foundation, Chicago and Santa Fe; Collezione Farnesina Experimenta, Rome, Italy; and Collezione BolognaFiere, Bologna, Italy.

From 2016–19, Solmi was Visiting Professor at Yale University School of Art and Yale School of Drama, New Haven, Connecticut, and he is Guest Critic for 2022. His awards include a 2009 Guggenheim Fellowship for Video and Audio in the Unites States and Canada from the John H Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.

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