From excitement to exhaustion
BTFL FREAK differentiates itself from my other series. For people who knew my earlier work, it seems almost as if another artist created it. This shift is a conscious revolt against a rule often pushed upon artist in art institutions: the pressure to stick to one signature style. This academic molding serves gallerists and the market because they need a predictable, easily sellable identity. As an artist, I feel the need to adopt different casquettes, changing roles, aesthetics, and masks as my process demand.
The title BTFL FREAK is also a direct metaphor for the artist. Society often views the artist as the crazy one, someone who holds strange ideas and lives in the margins of society. Every piece in this series shares the same background as a base: a flat, mass-produced emoji. At first glance, the series seems to depict joy. But upon closer inspection, the smiley’s gaze invites us to look behind its appearance.
Each piece carries a deeper affect, hiding underneath a subtle brush stroke or a colored layer. Some versions look completely fine, radiating a gaze of excitement and pure joy. Others incarnate a desolated or tormented state, calling for our empathy. In some pieces, the painted surface is visibly wearing away. For me, this is a metaphor for the erosion of the self, representing an attempt to let go of the constant need for validation. Yet, letting go of the ego is as much of a utopia as the pursuit of happiness itself. As Leo Tolstoy once wrote, "Happiness is an allegory, unhappiness a story." It is not the experience of happiness, but the relentless pursuit of it that makes us miserable.
Call it a gimmick
In this work, I portray myself next to this big smile as an act of self-irony, underlining my own personal and existential concerns. Consciously and unconsciously, we are all hiding behind masks. But do those masks really fit us? A mask can be used as a shield to protect our vulnerabilities, when in fact, it is only by sharing those vulnerabilities that we truly connect emotionally with each other. One day, someone proclaimed this series to be gimmicky, differentiating it from my previous work. Gimmicks are traditionally criticized for their superficiality, their lack of content, and their attention-seeking nature. Ultimately, that reaction proved to be incredibly accurate because of the series' reflective purpose.
My intention is precisely to question the obvious. I want to create a tension by triggering the spectator's perception in a subtle way, but it demands that we sharpen our senses. I like to navigate the space in-between the familiar and the surreal, openly questioning the subjectivity of how we perceive the world and each other.