The RoomFederico Solmi The scene of the crime is a white room. A small white
room, vividly lived, each inch of the walls almost scratched, as if tormented
by a hand. Yet, it’s only a white room. Like an artist’s studio, or a gallery
space. What is the crime, then? The crime is the room itself,
with those white hard dirty walls to resemble almost a prison. Federico Solmi’s small paper paintings are all little
psychotic pieces of the same puzzle, a puzzle that torments him and will
probably never be finished. The studio. The studio as the artists’ head, conceptually bare but,
looking closely, filled of his presence with all its tragedy. It’s a tragedy
slowly consumed within the artist’s head, an inner claustrophobia that
screams of a new existentialism to oppose this surreal political times where
good or bad, truth or falsity are merely decided by the media. 
There’s no sign of the media, no sign of our time in
Solmi’s obsessively scratched papers, just an illegible sentenced softly
written by the artist in red. Hard to decipher, it says something about not
trusting anyone, but paradoxically, it can just be a hopeful presence of
color. Red, nevertheless, in an almost completely white background. Again, a
conceptual background within the forceful black lines of the corners of the
room. What we’re facing here is a solemn statement of not
belonging. Federico Solmi takes and makes his the whole history of
art but, with passionate detachment, silently screams there is no place left
for art in this world.
Stefano Pasquini 2002 |
