Federico Solmi – The Drunken Boat: Guardini Galerie

KORNFELD Galerie Berlin and Galerie Anita Beckers (Frankfurt/Main) proudly present The Drunken Boat by Italian-American multimedia artist Federico Solmi at the Guardini Galerie.

In Solmi’s work, painting and video art interact in surprising harmony. Without conflict between genres or competition between classical artistic techniques and digital technology, space opens up for the existing potential of both to unfold. 3D animation and video game technologies work hand in hand with expressionist painting, creating striking visions of the world that burn themselves into the viewer’s subconscious.

Curator Larissa Kikol writes:

“What are fairytales if they do not serve the purpose of discovering truth? Federico’s art tells stories in grotesque, carnivalesque settings. With balloons, bottles of alcohol, and riders, his works question official American historiography. Curator Larry Ossei-Mensah describes Solmi’s approach as ‘social surrealism.’ Official history—long written by the victors—has manipulated facts, concealed atrocities such as the genocide of Native Americans, and propagated false narratives like those surrounding the Iraq War. Books such as Lies My Teacher Told Me and A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn have strongly influenced Solmi. Zinn writes about elite dominance, class struggle, the invasion of white Europeans, and the displacement of Indigenous peoples.

Federico Solmi tells new histories, striving to correct and move closer to truth. He employs storytelling, acting simultaneously as director, painter, dramaturge, and stage and costume designer. His worlds captivate with a unique satirical surrealism. They are dreams, nightmares, daydreams—tragic, humorous, frightening, festive, and threatening. Solmi’s art is, at its core, an art of narration. Few artists combine painting and virtual reality as masterfully as he does.

His figures wear exaggerated costumes and move slowly, like puppets. Their bodies sway, gain momentum, and circle back. Their skin bears painterly gestures instead of theatrical makeup; their faces are not masks, but paintings. Sometimes they appear drunk, sometimes lost. As in expressionist cinema, figures and surroundings merge into a Gesamtkunstwerk. Reality is represented through alienation.

Solmi’s surrealism produces a creeping sense of unease—a horror that approaches from the side rather than head-on. Truth reveals itself gradually, first sensed and then fully realized when discomfort settles deep within.

Leaders and presidents wave and parade, exposing themselves as hollow, virtual bodies wrapped in paint. Their pride turns them into caricatures; authority collapses into satire. The more power they believe they possess, the more they become a mockery of their own existence. Smiles turn into grotesque grimaces, and beneath colorful festivities lurks rhythmic military menace. What resembles official state ceremonies dissolves into an after-party delirium in which supposed heroes fall. Their mechanical movements become a treadmill.

Painterly traces take on new meanings in Solmi’s total artworks. Speckles become lights, reflections, or confetti-like showers. Expressionistically red-painted mouths transform into evil clown masks. Associations arise with Francisco de Goya, Nosferatu, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, and the paintings of George Grosz. Yet much initially appears comic—until cheerfulness disintegrates through constantly shifting skin tones. Faces appear scarred by colors and gestures that surface and vanish, making identities brittle and uncertain.

In his purely painterly works, Solmi translates digital geometric frameworks used to construct bodies into pastel and ink compositions. Bright lines shimmer like chains of stars or feathers, dancing into a new analogue existence. Here, figures such as Benjamin Franklin and George Washington ride ghost-like into nothingness, stripped of context and environment.

Anyone who engages deeply with Solmi’s work will never again view political pageantry innocently. Brushstrokes flare across presidential cheeks; mouths stretch into red rivers. Solmi’s surreal worlds merge painting, video technology, and the mediated images we consume daily—rendering not just one reality, but all realities increasingly questionable.”