Grip Face. “Utopía del Lodo, Sashimi de Bruma”

The installation consists of twelve suspended sculptures – masks held by thorn ropes – arranged in the shape of the European Union symbol. This configuration is not accidental: it questions Europe’s pacifist identity and its ambiguous role in armed conflicts. The masks, fragmented figures of ambiguous character, evoke silent, spectral presences that can be read as avatars of resistance or as protective amulets.

Grip Face draws inspiration from news reports of bombings in children’s playgrounds in places like Gaza or Ukraine, using the swing as a symbolic element to highlight the fragility of childhood in wartime. These swings, motionless and hung from thorns, transform the space into a haunting scene where theatricality becomes a metaphor for the battlefield, and stillness communicates a latent tension.

With this site-specific proposal, the artist transforms Espai Cúbic into an installation that invites slow and critical reflection on European identity, collective memory, and the fragility of contemporary peace.

Biography of Grip Face

David Oliver, the enigma behind Grip Face, is an artist who moves between the visible and the hidden, the intimate and the shared.

From the edges of the everyday, he has learned to perceive what is essential: that which does not reveal itself at first glance.

He chose to remain in the shadows for several years—not out of shyness, but as an act of resistance to constant exposure. His alter ego —Sandpaper Face— is both mask and refuge, shield and mirror, from which a deeply symbolic body of work emerges. His creations repeat four symbols like mantras: the mirror that reflects without recognition, the hair that holds memory, the mask that shields from the world’s noise, and the costume that unleashes darker desires.

His work is fluid and ever-changing, like a body adapting to the contours of each space. With near-surgical precision and a richly layered sensitivity, Grip Face builds worlds where analog and digital, figurative and abstract, coexist in tense harmony. Every stroke is a search; every intervention, an act of survival.

He has brought his work to diverse corners of the world —from Vienna to Seoul, from Madrid to Mexico— crossing both physical and symbolic borders. He recently exhibited at Tokyo’s Parco Museum and at Yiri Arts Gallery in Taipei, and is currently working on his third book in collaboration with Stolen Books. As an artist and curator, David Oliver sees creation as an endless journey, where the goal is not to reach a final destination, but to inhabit the present with honesty—no matter how uncertain it may be.