Multidisciplinary artist, known worldwide for his work for Rosalía El Mal Querer’s album (for which he won a Latin Grammy for Best Packaging Design), and for his collaborations with fashion brands such as Gucci, Kenzo or Dior, Filip Ćustić ( Santa Cruz de Tenerife, 1993), has, despite his youth, an extensive curriculum. He stands out for his so-called “virtual paintings”, in which he works on pataphysics and what he calls “objectism.” According to the presentation note of the Filip Al (l) one exhibition, which is currently hosting the Bibli gallery, “his work explores what it means to be human in our present and immediate future, as well as the impact of digital technologies on our consciousness and sense of identity ”. His work, the artist says, has scientific and Bauhaus influences.
This, his first individual, responds to what, in Ćustić’s own terms, is a “psychological stage.” The artist continues with his “visual riddles” but now seems to lean towards introspection, which he intends to unite with loneliness and the fact of “duplicating oneself” to “see oneself from the outside (…) because it means seeing oneself in a more objective way.” This was already mentioned last year in the context of the pandemic in his interview for Harper’s Bazaar.
In the room there are two «virtual paintings», where Ćustić «duplicates» himself, treated with Photoshop and with aspiration, according to the artist, «hyper-realistic». There are also two videographic works with the characteristic format of social networks, one of them a tiktok on a vertical screen. There are also several sculptures where it simulates its self-cloning. With them he makes a trompe l’oeil so that the viewer, as he pretends, asks himself: “Is he human or not?”
The materials he uses are well selected, as silicone, resin, and Photoshop are all effective means to achieve the artist’s proclaimed end: “hyper-realism.”
His photographs, which looked incredible in the online edition, have lost that dreamlike feeling
In an interview with Metal Magazine, Ćustić says that he is guided by intuition and that it sometimes makes him lose himself. I think that in this exhibition it has been completely lost: hyperrealism requires exceptional meticulousness, something that a work lacks in a work that is missing pieces of paint and that, in some cases, is taped together, as is the case with « hyperrealistic ego + wind toy ». The “materialized selfie: x = y = z”, with badly cut wood and attached with visible glue, does not seem very “hyper-realistic” either. Both the mask and the mask, with which Filip Ćustić intends to “clone” his face, ruin the expectations he generated when he spread his work on social media. His photographs, which seemed incredibly well edited on the internet, in the gallery space turn out not to be so. Was it worth printing them? Losing that dreamlike feeling they had, multiplied thanks to the systematic loss of quality of the photos on Instagram? Throwing away that aesthetic experience?
Some of Ćustić’s works, such as the “performance” he did in Bibli, could serve his purpose of “mesmerizing the viewer.” But the illusionist has been exposed. After visiting the gallery they are no longer interesting.