FRANCESCO SIMETI

Born in Palermo in 1968, and graduated in Sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bologna, Francesco Simeti lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. Among the most internationally acclaimed Italian artists, Simeti is currently engaged in a number of public art projects in the United States, including the Brooklyn subway stop in New York, and has made site-specific installations in various museum spaces including MACRO of Rome, the Risd Museum, Providence, Art & Idea Gallery in Mexico City, Columbia University in New York. His work has been featured at the 9th Shanghai Biennial, just ended, the Gallery of Modern Art in Palermo in the solo exhibition An Artful Confusion, and among others, at MASS MoCA, Massachusetts, at the Gallery of Modern Art of Bologna, at Mu.dac, Musée de Design et d’Arts Appliqués Contemporains of Lausanne, at the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia and the Riso Museum of Palermo. Some of his wallpapers have been acquired by major international museum collections such as the Smithsonian Cooper Hewitt, National Museum of Design in New York, Victoria and Albert Museum in London, Fabric Workshop and Museum in Philadelphia.

His work is inspired by the ambiguity in printing that characterizes the relationship between form and content, by creating a kind of continuous and endlessly changeable landscape. His research emphasizes on the one hand that interest for the aesthetic factor that threatens to deny the actual content of the images, on the other hand the risk of flattening brought about by the excess of visual information. The first impact with his ornamental patterns brings about an aesthetic pleasure and a reassuring feeling; on looking closer, however, one cannot fail to notice unexpected details.

www.francescosimeti.com

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