UTOPÍA DEL LODO Y SASHIMI DE BRUMA

Twelve swings rest in an orderly fashion to form a circle. While the long hanging structures generate strangeness due to the spikes that accompany them, each structure functions as a seat for a different character, drawn from a specific imaginary. The figures display varied and colorful forms, whether through their large noses or their diverse hairstyles ending in extremely shiny hair. We usually associate swings with playgrounds or with rocking as a form of play. Here, however, something different takes place, where stillness prevails and produces another meaning, functioning as a cinematic archetype: a motionless swing is a sign that something is wrong—and these sharp thorns confirm the message. Grip Face (Palma de Mallorca, 1989) has built a playground to place us before a moment of crisis. As in other projects, the artist manages to escape Millennial nostalgia to instead offer commentary on a present event. The sinister warning, which contrasts with the sugary and sparkling tone of these forms, actually reveals new and ominous imposed logics (military and colonial) that break apart everything once promised as well-being: public space implies danger, amusement is not an option, and childhoods are utterly threatened. The key element in this ensemble is the mask. Grip Face has created a visual dictionary inspired by signs, palettes, and references from the street. He resorts to a crossover between internet folklore and underground references. The artist constantly plays with the exchange of references, always revealing while concealing at the same time—a movement that begins with his own alter ego. It continues with a repertoire of portraits, as he calls them. They become avatars that carry a double meaning, confronting reality and poetry. Here, a prosthetic stage set of resin, velvet, and injected hair places us before a stellar circle, which is nothing but a note on European complicity in this panorama. In the end, the space becomes a dystopian allegory, a mud utopia that warns of the hijacking of any expectation of the future. The sculptural series counters the numbing of scrolling and digital architecture to expose, through the reformulation of the symbol, the rawness of an unfolding event.