THE CZECH CENTRE PRAGUE / LINES AND FRAMES
FEDERICO SOLMI
THE DOUCHE BAG CITY
FLORIAN GROND
THE FINE LINE
23.7.- 28.08.2010
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The exhibition takes place in THE CZECH CENTRE PRAGUE,
Rytirska 31, Prague 1
pre-opening 22.7., 6 p.m.
The life music at the pre-opening: IBY ANS CHIPSY EMPIRE. Partner of the evening is Becherovka liquor.
The Czech Centre Prague and the Vernon Gallery co-oganizes an exhibition LINES AND FRAMES, which consists of two individual exhibitions - THE DOUCHE BAG CITY by the italian artist based in USA Federico Solmi and THE FINE LINE by German artist Florian Grond.
THE DOUCHE BAG CITY
Federico Solmi (Italy, 1973 lives and works in US)
The exhibition The Douche Bag City by New York based artist - Federico Solmi will include a selection of video animations created between 2005 and 2010 present an installation currently exhibited at Santa Fe’s Eighth International Biennial in New Mexico (SITE).
The 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, The 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. The 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)
CONTACT
CZECH CENTRE PRAGUE
Radka Labendz / Program and PR Manager
Rytířská 31, Prague 1
T: + 420 234 668 507
M: + 420 777 055 040
E: labendz@czech.cz
www.czechcentres.cz/prague
www.export.cz
VERNON GALLERY
Markéta Faustová/PR
M:+420 773 915 501
E: marketafaustova@seznam.cz, marketa.faustova@tina-b.com
www.galerievernon.com
open: tue/fri 10 am-6 pm, sat 12 pm-6 pm, entrance free
