Filip Lav
"I see the mythological figures as liminal messengers on the border between a desacralized present and archetypal meanings of the past."
Interview by Richard Starbuck
Could you tell us a bit about yourself and your background? Where did you study?
My parents came to Austria during the breakdown of former Yugoslavia. I was born and grew up in Vienna. They are architects very much informed aesthetically by Balkan Brutalism and the socialist buildings philosophy of Le Corbusier. Vienna, on the other hand, is brimming with very elaborate neo-baroque facades in the late Habsburg Empire style. I learned to appreciate both, growing up very much with a foot in these two very different cultural worlds. I did my BFA at the Ruskin School at Oxford University and my MFA at Columbia University in New York, where I spent a few years. I am currently living and working in London.
Your work intertwines the evocative elements of 19th-century romanticism with the fragmented geometry of modernist abstraction. Can you discuss the process and challenges of merging these seemingly disparate artistic languages into a cohesive visual narrative?
It's a tale of two worldviews. The anti-ornamental modernist impulse feels like what Max Weber called a puritanical "iron cage" encompassing the West. From within, it seems to be squeezing out a seemingly endless array of rectangular shapes, be it brutalist concrete buildings, flattened minimal paintings, or shiny aluminum smartphones. The forms embody this logic, and I think of ultra-reduced modes of painting like an early Frank Stella. This is something I both revear and abhor. I take it as a seedbed to contrast and infect it with the ethereal, metaphoric language of 19th-century romanticism. It's almost like the trope of planting flower seeds in concrete sidewalk cracks, but instead of a Lilly, the whole painting sprouts out.
The rectangular compositions of my canvases come from such modernist fragments I encounter in granite floors patterns from inner city Vienna or dilapidated brutalist housing projects in London. I create canvases in these shapes and almost treat it like a minimalist skrying board that I try tracing out futures in. The figures and patterns that start to emerge sometimes speak of desires, fears, or promises. It's an attempt to convince myself of a way out of the iron fisted cultural logic of the present.
The challenge lies in these two aesthetic worldviews. Modernism is full of materiality; everything is about the body, bound to gravity, and connects seamlessly to a bleak scientific materialist outlook. The romanticist aesthetic is full of scepters, spirits, and individual desires. Mythos is around every corner, and painting from that style can feel like almost lifting into space and evaporating obscurely into thin air. The materiality of the one needs the re-enchantment of the other.
Mythological figures feature prominently in your inner landscapes, serving as symbols inherited from dark romanticism. How do you select these characters, and what role do they play in the dialogue between the historical and the contemporary within your pieces?
I see the mythological figures as liminal messengers on the border between a desacralized present and archetypal meanings of the past. They connect the very old and forgotten with the urgently present. In my painting "Angelus Novus" for instance, I am referencing Paul Klee’s painting of the angel of the future. I also think of it in terms of another contemporary of Klee, the poet Reiner Maria Rilke. In his "Duino Elegies, he describes a modern encounter with the timeless figure of an angel. He calls it a terrifying beauty, something metaphysically impossible to comprehend but mesmerizing. I think the mythological figures of the past can operate as accessible visual tropes with a more profound trapdoor potential hidden within, inviting existential questions.
Icarus, 2023
Flesh Failures, 2023
Ver Sacrum, 2023
Good Oblivion, 2023
Hopecore, 2023
Incorporating the crucifix shape into the fragmented layout of your canvases presents a powerful visual motif. Could you shed light on how this specific form enriches the dialogue between the layered mythological characters and the abstract geometries that characterize your artistic practice?
The crucifix forms started to appear spontaneously after a while in my paintings. It is informed by the cultural logic of the “Hopecore” internet meme, describing a mode between belief and its impossibility, crying and laughter. This intersection is embodied for me in the shape of the cross. Ultimately, the dead end of modernity, leaving a postmodernist wasteland of meaning in its wake, seems to point back into a revaluation of a fragmented and strange past.
What artwork have you seen recently that has resonated with you?
Two exhibits left a strong impression in the recent past. Last year, the Croatian artist duo Tarwuk had a solo show in White Cube in London. I have been following their work for a while now and was blown away by their theatrical expanded artistic practice spanning from post-apocalyptic sculptures to paintings with an almost pre-20th century magical realist quality. The other exhibit also opened last year in Stuart Shave Modern Art London by the painter and poet Justin Caguiat. I finally got to see his paintings in real life. I was mesmerized by his floating dreamscapes painted in the formal logic of a mycelial network.
Is there anything new and exciting in the pipeline you would like to tell us about?
I am working towards the end of the year summer show in the Turps Studio Program and presenting a large-scale work in a group show at the Bomb Factory on narrative painting, both opening in London this year.
All images courtesy of the artist
Interview publish date: 04/03/2024
