“I’ve felt the urge to make my visual universe tangible for quite a long time. My illustration work mostly lives on paper or screen,” says Philip. “I wanted to know and see what it feels like when my world takes up physical space. The cap sculptures felt like a fun side quest, but also something more personal than most of my spatial work. It’s rooted in a specific memory and a specific feeling. A tribute to my youth, to skate culture, to the visual language that shaped me. That made it especially compelling to explore.”
By experimenting with more than just pen, paper or a mouse, Philip first envisioned ceramics for the caps, but the process was a bit too slow and demanding for his work flow. So he settled on a papier-mâché clay fusion, where the material’s imperfections would become the focus. Caps feels like a collection of hats worn by outsider artists in the 90s, an alternate universe fashion magazine where everyone is a Cartoon Network character. “The caps came out wonky, dense, almost stone-like. If they’d been perfectly smooth and polished, something would have been wrong. Too new, too clean. A friend looked at them and said: they’re fossils from your youth. That landed immediately. That’s exactly what they are,” says Philip.
As a teenager, Philip spent hours copying logos and characters from brands that had their own visual universe – now Philip is creating his own. Easter eggs, personal references, homages, odes – some legible, some buried in the DNA, but the love is most certainly there. When you wear a cap, you become a mobile endorsement for whatever is on the cap. The most wonderful thing about Philip’s work is that its all rooted in homage and representation – and what Philip’s caps endorse is the act of repainting everything you love.