Filip Firlefijn

Biography

Filip Firlefijn was born in Wilrijk, Belgium, in 1979. In 2005 he received a master's degree in Germanic languages and has been 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. He is currently working on his third screenplay. 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 artistic vision. Currently, he is living in Switzerland and as a photographer, he has gathered a collection of mainly landscape and street photography on his website. His photographic oeuvre is mainly non-commercial and part of his artistic endeavour. Thanks to one of his performance photos he was a semi-finalist at Miami 2.0 by the Artbox Project. In 2020 and 2021 he was respectively given the "Artist of the Future Award" and the "Power of Creativity Award" by a magazine from London, called "Contemporary Art Curator Magazine". In 2021 he was also fortunate to receive multiple prizes by Russo, Effetto Arte and Art Now, such as the "International Prize DAVID Michelangelo", the "International Prize Dante Alighieri", as well as the "Art Olympic Prize". Moreover, he was added to “The Best of Modern and Contemporary Art 2021” by Effetto Arte, and rewarded for representing his nation through his art by means of the award “Ambassador of Art". The same group of professional art supporters also gave him a good start in 2022 by rewarding him with the "International Prize Leonardo da Vinci" to try and give him some advantage to reach the next level: professionally selling his art to an art loving audience for a respecting price.

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 constrained 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 on a vermillion background 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.

Country Switzerland

Website https://www.firlefijn.com/