Filip Firlefijn
Biography
Filip Firlefijn was born in 1979 in Wilrijk, Belgium. In 2005 Filip received a master's degree in Germanic languages. He is creative in many fields, such as literature, art and photography.
In 2002 he came in second in a literary competition in college and has since written a book of poems, two screenplays and a lengthy essay. As an artist he has drawn more than 1000 ballpoint portraits and painted more than 100 large-scale portraits of iconic people. The public domain has been a subject of his artisctic vision. Currently he is living in Switzerland and has gathered a collection of landscape photography on his website. Thanks to one of his performance photos he was a semi-finalist at Miami 2.0 by the Artbox Project. In 2020 he received the Artist of the Future Award by the Contemporary Art Curator Magazine. In 2021 he was fortunate to receive the International Prize DAVID Michelangelo, as well as Dante Alighieri, by Russo. Moreover, he was added to “The Best of Modern and Contemporary Art 2021” by the same organisation, and rewarded for representing his nation through his art by means of the award “Ambassador of Art 2021".
Artist Statement
Filip Firlefijn's background is Belgian. He grew up in its comic book culture, to which his art still refers. Yet, he connects that background to the international art scene and its history, as well. Like Warhol, he has chosen his subject to be the public domain, which has become more wide in recent years through the internet. We all live in this strange knowledge bubble that is not that much contrained anymore to our streets, schools or jobs. Everybody is hungry for more. A lot of people hunger for a bigger life, even. Style, humor and intelligence in his artwork keep the relativity of that hunger alive and the hunger itself sane. There is also a hunger in his art towards craftsmanship, towards the talent of drawing and the more distant history of art. His large-scale magenta paintings seem like sketches for more realistic grandiose portrait paintings. He is by that means also awakening a more serious hunger through the imagination of the viewer. Strengthening their hunger towards depth and meaning, and emphasizing the depth which pop culture itself or any new culture is able to uphold.
Website: firlefijn.com
