Utopía del Lodo, Sashimi de Bruma

Twelve swings rest in an orderly arrangement, forming a circle. While the long hanging structures generate strangeness due to the spikes that accompany them, each structure serves as a seat for a different character, each drawn from a specific imaginary world. The figures are varied and colorful — whether through oversized noses or diverse hairstyles that end in extremely shiny hair. We usually associate swings with playgrounds or with the back-and-forth motion of play. Here, however, something else takes place: stillness prevails and produces another meaning, functioning as an archetype of cinema. A swing that remains still is a sign that something is wrong—and these sharp spikes confirm the message. Grip Face (Palma de Mallorca, 1989) has built a playground that places us before a moment of crisis. As in other projects, the artist escapes Millennial nostalgia to offer instead a commentary on present events. The sinister warning — contrasting with the sweetened, sparkling tone of these forms — reveals, in fact, new and ominous logics (military and colonial) that shatter everything once tied to the promise of well-being: public space implies danger, fun is no longer an option, and childhoods are entirely under threat. 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 turns to a crossover between internet folklore and underground references. The artist constantly plays with this exchange, always showing while simultaneously hiding — a movement that begins with his own alter ego. It continues with a repertoire of portraits, as he calls them: avatars that carry a double meaning, confronting reality and poetics. Here, a prosthetic scenography of resin, velvet, and injected hair places us before a stellar circle, which is nothing less than a commentary on European complicity in such a panorama. In the end, the space becomes a dystopian allegory, a mud-bound utopia warning of the hijacking of any expectation of the future. The sculptural series counters the numbing effect of scrolling and digital architecture to lay bare — through a reformulation of the symbol—the rawness of what is happening.