Visually sumptuous and incisively satirical, Federico Solmi’s multimedia works expose the excesses and contradictions of power across history and contemporary culture. Adrift presents new and recent “video paintings” alongside the monumental canvas The Ship of Fools, which reimagines Théodore Géricault’s Raft of the Medusa (1818–19) through Solmi’s irreverent visual language. The painting assembles historical and present-day figures—from Christopher Columbus to Elon Musk—into a chaotic allegory of a society unmoored. Evoking a contemporary America adrift amid spectacle, instability, and competing claims to power, the exhibition also includes a Virtual Reality experience that immerses visitors in Solmi’s destabilizing world.
About the Artist:
Born in 1973 in Bologna, Italy, Federico Solmi now lives in New York. His groundbreaking work in video and audio was recognized with the award of a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship in 2009. Solo museum surveys include American Circus at the Haifa Museum of Art in Haifa, Israel, in 2016; The Grand Masquerade at the Tarble Art Center in Charleston, Illinois, in 2019; and Joie de Vivre at the Morris Museum in Morristown, New Jersey, in 2022–23. In September 2024, his solo show The Great Farce opened at the Block Museum of Art Northwestern University in Chicago, Illinois. Solmi: Ship of Fools was also the subject of a major exhibition in Venice, Italy at Palazzo Donà Dalle Rose, during the Venice Biennale in 2024.
In 2018, Solmi participated in the citywide project Open Spaces: A Kansas City Arts Experience in Kansas. In 2019, his work was included in the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery’s traveling exhibition The Outwin 2019: American Portraiture Today. In 2021, he was featured in the Phillips Collection’s centennial exhibition Seeing Differently as well as the inaugural exhibition of the Ocean Flower Museum Island in Danzhou, China. He has participated in several international biennial exhibitions, including the SITE Santa Fe Biennial in New Mexico in 2010; Venice Biennale in 2011; Shenzhen Animation Biennial in China in 2013; and Beijing Media Art Biennale in 2016.
Solmi’s work is in numerous public and private collections, including the Phillips Collection (Washington DC), The Phoenix Art Museum (Phoenix AZ), The Block Museum (Evanston, IL), The Thoma Foundation (Chicago, Santa Fe), Pinacoteca di Brera (Milano IT), Table Art Center (Charleston, IL), 21 C Museum Hotel (Louisville KY), Fundacion Mer (Madrid ES), Ocat Oct Contemporary Art Terminal (Shanghai CN), Collezione Farnesina Experimenta (Rome IT), Collezione Bologna Fiere SPA (Bologna IT).
The Everson is supported by the Dorothy and Marshall M. Reisman Foundation; the General Operating Support program, a regrant program of the County of Onondaga with the support of County Executive, J. Ryan McMahon II, and the Onondaga County Legislature, administered by CNY Arts; and the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.
Federico Solmi
The Indulgent Wanderers (detail), 2026
Acrylic, paint, mixed media on plexiglass, LED screen, video loop, 18 x 25½ x 4 inches
Courtesy of the artist
