GRIP FACE

PALMA DE MALLORCA, SPAIN 1989

Grip face is visual artist David Oliver’s alter ego. (1989)

“Sandpaper head”-thats how his skaterboarding fellows used to call him back in the early 2000s in La Palma. Like a significant number of artists belonging to the millennial generation, he initiated his visual and aesthetic education: rollerblading in the streets, reading comics, watching anime, listening to Anglo-Saxon music and thoroughly studying book, cd, and fanzine covers. Under the auspices of the 1990s American underground wave, the graphics used by the Punk movement in the 1980s and the Asian naive art, Grip Face dived into the initiation rite of graffiti plastics as well as in its subsequent deconstruction; very early on, the insurrection of the media itself allowed him to understand art as a means to survive. Drawing and painting turned into weapons of mass destruction against the anxiety of the contemporary world. And thus began a multifaceted artistic career that would revolve mainly around constantly reexamining the very contemplation of his own pleiad. With this vocation to being an artist-engineer, Grip Face bridges the gap between contexts, elements, techniques, spaces and people. He draws part of his primal language, built mainly within the public sphere- represented by projects like Doors without destination and Black faces (published in 2016 in book format under the same title)- shifting it instead to private spaces like galleries of contemporary art through site-specific installations, sculptures, paintings or tapestries.
 
Projects like Not rented to humans or Black rubbish is the future reflect the angst and the distress incurred by being both actors and witnesses of our own home’s self-destruction. His sketch books, which he keeps with him since his teens, and which constitute the purest as well as the darkest side of his work, are a prelude to most of his finished works.

Moving around with ease among the nooks seems to be an idiosyncratic quality of this visual artist, maybe because he always perceived himself as outsider, never feeling quite comfortable with any tag whatsoever, while feeling equally anxious and always in the expectative when faced with the prospect of a society constantly in disguise. A society that seems irretrievably compelled to technological massification, to communication through devices, to superficial relationships and to the concealment of truth.

Similarly to a screen that repeats staggeringly an “error” message in fivefold overlapping windows, Grip Face’s painting provides a playful space full of layers within which one may dissect the concerns of an impatient generation, hungry for information- reliable or not- and to whom the internet landscape seems to be the best platform onto which one may learn the savoir-faire properly. His cloths are not familiar with the impatient indexes pommeling on the mouse’s left side; every layer of every piece of information is processed in a precise and meticulous way, and the technique is never trivial.

Every layer is submitted to intervention, is crossed off or covered, thus shaping a meta universe riddled with aesthetic references that are intrinsic to generation Y (and to generation Z, and, most probably to all future letters to come too for that matter) and implemented with a technical precision of its own, through which he learned to paint under the yoke of immediacy. They all belong to an endless series and an evolving exploration, both part of the author’s learning process crafting them. What’s meaningful to Grip Face is continuity, this inability to see the end-product, and the uncertainty as to whither the painting will lead it. It’s about living the artistic expression the way we live in the world, transiently and in a doubtful present.

SOLO EXHIBITIONS

  • 2021 – Saudade 01/158 Sc gallery, Bilbao
  • 2020 – “Máscaras de una generación millennial” Cerquone Gallery, Madrid
  • 2018 – “Precollapse” Pep Llabrés Gallery. Palma. Majorca
  • 2017 – ’Exported items’ Jan Arnold Gallery, Vienna. Austria
  • 2016 – “Black faces” Sc Gallery, Bilbao. Basque Country
  • 2016 – Doors without destination, CCA Andratx. Majorca
  • 2015 – “Decomposed in an uncertain present”, Miscelanea Gallery, Barcelona
  • 2011 – “Routes without destination”, I/A Gallery, Palma. Majorca

GROUP EXHIBITIONS

  • 2022 – “SELFIE” curated by Ester Almeda, Galería Moisés Pérez Albéniz, Madrid
  • 2022 – “Relaciones publicas” curated by Jordi Pallarès – Cerquone Gallery, Caracas, Venezuela
  • 2022 – Group show, Slika Gallery, Lyon, France
  • 2022 – “Erretratu” Group show SC gallery, Bilbao, Spain
  • 2022 – “UGLY” group show. YIRIARTS gallery Taipei, Taiwan
  • 2021 – “FAMILIA” group show, Woaw Gallery, Hong Kong
  • 2021 – “FRESH” group show, Padre Gallery, New york
  • 2021 – “Nice Guys Live Forever”, curated by Moosey projects. Hoxton arches, London
  • 2021 – FLYSCH – group show. Sc Gallery, Bilbao
  • 2020 – It’s a Match, group exhibition. HFA space. Vienna, Austria
  • 2020 – “QUARANTINE” group exhibition. Sc Gallery. Bilbao, Biscay
  • 2019 – “Summer show” group exhibition. Lundgren Gallery. Palma, Mallorca
  • 2019 – “Art in my mouth: Manila” group exhibition curated by Moosey art project. Secret F. Gallery. Manila, Philippines
  • 2018 – “Resistance X” group exhibition 10th anniversary SC Gallery. Bilbao
  • 2018 – “I BAG YOU” collective exhibition curated by Ida-Marie Corell at Kunstraumretz Art Center. Retz,Austria
  • 2017 – “Present immediat” curated by Pilar Rubí, Sa Nostra Cultural Centre, Palma. Majorca
  • 2017 – Streetartpassage/ Open archive, Jan Arnold Gallery. Vienna, Austria
  • 2016 – “We are antonyms” Fabra i Coats. Barcelona. Catalonia
  • 2016 – Consell de Mallorca Exhibition. N/P Centre la Misericordia. Palma
  • 2015 – “Final” curated by Jordi Pallarès, Sc Gallery bilbao. Biscay
  • 2015 – “Graphic Correspondences”, Feira Plana, Sao Paulo. Brazil
  • 2015 – “Intervened Archive”, curated by Fernando Gómez de la Cuesta. Saltillo Contemporary Art Festival, Mexico
  • 2015 – “Pass this on” curated by Jordi Pallarès. Taca space, Palma. Majorca
  • 2014 – Miniprint fair, Hyvinkää Art Museum. Hyvinkää. Finland
  • 2014 – Opening Print workers, Printworkes gallery. Barcelona. Catalonia
  • 2013 – SR/ OFF, C.A.C. Ses voltes with the collaboration of the Pilar and Joan Miró Foundation. Curated by Grip Face & Jordi Pallarès. Palma. Majorca
  • 2013 – “Subversive routes II”, curated by Grip Face. Ikara Gallery. Barcelona. Catalonia
  • 2013 – 40putes. 1 any de putes i mamades. Pelaires Gallery. Palma. Majorca
  • 2012 – The Invisibles, curated by Jordi Pallarès. Centro Son Tugores. Alaró. Majorca
  • 2012 – “Tripode”, curated by Grip Face. I/A Gallery. Palma. Majorca
  • 2012 – “Subversive ways”, curated by Grip Face. Sa Possessió. Palma. Majorca

PRIZES

  • 2017 – 1 Prize International Contest of contemporary painting Sant Marçal (Marratxi). Majorca
  • 2016 – Finalist in the public competition “REHABILITART” / Mural Gestos post-catarsis. Palma City Council. Majorca
  • 2014 – Selected competition Miniprint Finland show. Hyvinkää Museum. Finland

COLLECTIONS

  • SOLO Collection
  • M.E.R FOUNDATION
  • SANTILLANA FOUNDATION
  • MELÍA Private Collection
  • CAPRILES COLLECTION
  • BLACK WELL COLLECTION

SITE-SPECIFIC PROJECTS

  • 2018 – Mural indoor site-specific for Espacio Solo. COLECCION SOLO MUSEUM. Madrid
  • 2017 – European bathers. Urban mural intervention curated by Jan Arnold Gallery. Vienna. Austria
  • 2016 – Site-specific intervention “O”. Doors without destination” project. La Misericòrdia Cultural Centre, Consell de Mallorca & CCA Andratx. Palma. Majorca
  • 2015 – Interventions for the “Black Faces” project. Naples (Italy), Barcelona (Spain), Amsterdam (Netherlands)

PUBLISHED BOOKS

  • 2021 – Second book “Diario visual vol 1” . Co-edited by Colección Solo & Cerquone projects. Text by Basilio Baltasar.
  • 2016 – Book “Black faces”, the first book by the artist that gathers all the interventions and works of this international project. Co-edited by Illenc & Collaboration SC Gallery. Bilbao