(Finance) – The book is transformed, it changes skin, it becomes a multimedia and interactive object, which can act as a tool to approach the world of visual arts, which in turn is facing great changes: in an economic panorama like that of Italian publishing, which in 2024 sees all the pandemic economic support measures fall and can still boast a fourth place among the large European markets, technology must be a driving force to conquer precious reading niches.
In this particular historical moment, technology and tradition join hands to meet innovation. Thus a Publishing House like D’ORO Collection – which brings back to life centuries of history and tradition from the Middle Ages to today and whose volumes are created according to the proportions of Leonardo’s Vitruvian Man – has created together with the artist Federico Solmia forerunner of digital art, a trilogy that mixes the ancient technique of bookbinding with video art, painting and new technologies.
The triptych is called “The Grand Voyage” and was presented on July 16th in Venice, at the closing of the exhibition event “SOLMI – Ship of Fools”in dialogue between art, publishing and innovation.
“The Goddess”the contemporary and vain Cleopatra; “The Wizard”, the noble in metaphysical contemplation; “The Wanderer”the medieval warrior between adult introspection and childish wonder: these are the characters that Federico Solmi has decided to make protagonists of the trilogy, highlighting them with his sharp irony and making sure that within each single book, they navigate in a computer-generated universe, dressed up in costumes from different eras, in one-minute loops that recall mythology and contemporary culture.
From the Vitruvian Man to the Gutenberg Man to reach a new form, still to be discovered: if in 1962 Marshall McLuhan had theorized the change in human consciousness that the advent of the printed book had brought about, the trilogy “The Grand Voyage” It shows that we are ready for the next step.
During the meeting on July 16, in the suggestive Palazzo Donà delle Rose in Venice – which saw Federico Solmi, Alessandro Tiezzi and Davide Sarchioni (Founder and Artistic Director VDA by Var Group) and Dino Salvatore Giorgio (Founder D’ORO Collection) as protagonists – the path of Federico Solmi was retraced together with Var Digital Art by Var Group, the company actively engaged in promoting the relationship between art and business through digital technologies and essential creative and technological support in Solmi’s Venetian exhibition.
The exhibition, which can be visited until July 28, is structured around several groups of works, including videos, paintings, a VR work, ceramic sculptures, an innovative holographic sculpture developed in collaboration with Var Group – the first of its kind – and an absolute preview work: Ship of Fools, a 3 x 6 meter work inspired by Gericault’s The Raft of the Medusa, with references to Plato’s Republic and a book of the same name from 1494 by Sebastian Brant, published in Basel and illustrated with 114 woodcuts.
And Var Group itself, on the occasion of the 2024 convention “Hello Dreamers” – on October 3 and 4 at the Palacongressi in Rimini – will continue to talk about art and technology by presenting the visionary side of digital evolution: a meeting dedicated to all those who are not afraid to dream and “make their digital soul vibrate”.
SOLMI – Ship of Fools, curated by Dorothy Kosinski and co-curated by Renato Miracco, is realized in partnership with Var Digital Art by Var Group. The Carl & Marilynn Thoma Foundation has generously contributed to the construction of this project, while the museum support comes from the Phillips Collection, an outpost of contemporary art in the United States, where Federico Solmi is present with several works in the collection. The communication strategy of the exhibition is entrusted to HF4 by Marco del Bene.