Swerving around the grand feast, lavishly costumed leaders indulge in smoke and spirits as they mingle, flirt, and cheer to the endless party.
Inspired by ancient mythology, modern myth, and contemporary celebrity culture, “The Bacchanalian Ones” compares the historical myth with a satirical mash-up of the powerful self-absorbed who preen and wallow in a banal spectacle of their own creation. In a fantastically opulent setting of unrestrained hedonism, political, religious, and military leaders with ghoulish, bouffonesque appearances are surrounded by social elite sycophants like the devotees of the cults of Bacchus and Dionysus. Solmi’s phantasmagoric world of whirling space, jerking movement, and oscillating facades that strive to overwhelm the viewer’s visual field is pushed to extremes in a new interactive Virtual Reality installation.
Edition 1/1