John Paul Fauves | The Masks Artist

The Masks Artist, John Paul Fauves

“When judgment is gone, you feel the freedom to create. I started to paint wearing a mask so I could create without ego.
I could detach myself from the idea that something has to be in a certain way so it will be liked.
The masks are a life project. I’ve been focused on masks for 18 years (since I started painting). It is also partly to show people that being connected to myself without caring how you look to others is rewarding.”
– John Paul Fauves

John Paul Fauves (b. 1980) is a contemporary Costa Rican Artist who lives and works in San Jose. Heavily influenced by the Fauvist movement of the early 20th century – John Paul seeks to eternally question and challenge viewers. His themes deal with all aspects of the self: temptation, addiction, and redemption being prominent throughout his works. John Paul formulated much of his technique and subject matter under the guidance of Joaquin Rodriguez Del Paso throughout the 90s and early 2000s – and then spent fifteen years developing his signature fusing of pop culture icons with sinister and ever-changing elements. “A Loss of Innocence” – a theme conceived in 2015 was introduced to the NYC art scene with a solo show with The TAX Collection. This series dealt with the innocence we observe in children (for John, this was his young son) and how we grapple with knowing they will inevitably lose this fragile worldview as they are exposed to the cruelty and beauty of the outside world.

“Art is an expression from the soul, and the soul is something limitless. This is why I am always searching for different elements to bring into the work.”

Ever since I was a little kid, I have always struggled to see how I fit into this world.
I struggled with being born into a structure that depends on people’s willingness to change and fit in.
I always knew I wanted to do art, but I have faced many rejections as an artist since I was 15 years old and started to paint. Because of those rejections, I followed my family’s expectations, studied business, got a master’s degree, and got a desk job.
After working the rat race for a few years, I ended up falling heavily into drugs. It was some kind of a paradox because they became my freedom even though they almost killed me. I could also detach myself from the fear of what society was thinking of me through that suffering. I was at my worst period, and the judging didn’t kill me as I thought it would.

When you lose it all and end up on the streets, you learn to not care about anything but do what’s good for you and your family. What other people think stops mattering. So I finally followed my dream and started making art for myself.
I found the fauvist movement, where my name came from. The name essentially translates to the wild beast, and artists in the movement like Matisse were considered as a wild beast by the French oligarchy & art critics. Even their techniques were wild, sometimes painting straight from the tube and using their hands instead of brushes.
Starting to paint in this crazy way helped me avoid all my temptations. Creating art turned into this visceral experience where I could channel my physical, spiritual, and mental energy.
When judgment is gone, you feel the freedom to create. I started to paint wearing a mask so I could create without ego. I could detach myself from the idea that something has to be in a certain way so it will be liked.
The masks are a life project. I’ve been focused on masks for 18 years (since I started painting). It is also partly to show people that being connected to myself without caring how you look to others is rewarding. Finding your connection between mind and soul is above all else, and I try to signify that through my art.
You only have one breath in this lifetime, and using it to become what you think others want you to become is a waste, in my opinion.

The New World as Envisioned by John Paul Fauves
The Metaverse, NFT’s, and AvatarSkins

John Paul Fauves sees the world a little differently than you or me. When asked how old he is, he says he only knows for sure how old his body is, but not how old he is himself.
“Honestly, my mind feels much younger than my body, and my soul feels like it has been here for thousands of years,”
he says.
Where are we going? How do we get there? How much can we shape our future? These are the questions that drive the man behind the mask. Fauves chooses to remain anonymous, and as a result, he dons a variety of masks he’s made himself.

Rather than to protect his privacy, he does so to prove a point— the same point he’s out to prove with his latest project: Avatar Skins.
“We have lived on farms, we live in cities, and now we are going to live on the internet.”
Your body should be purely a vehicle for self-expression and fulfillment, devoid of judgment or expectations. It might sound counterintuitive, but it is easier to hide behind your face than behind a mask. Most humans go through their days exhibiting imperfectly matched behavior, meaning that their face does not accurately emote what their brain is feeling. We’ve all smiled when we’re feeling sad. We’ve all remained stoic when every fiber of our being wants desperately to scream inside us. We feel the need to hide our true selves because humans innately are insecure, always caring about our perception of others. We feel the need to be perfect, always presenting an air of invincibility and strength that isn’t always there. This has led to a universal self-expression canon of sorts, telling us exactly how we can represent ourselves and in which ways we cannot. Fauves aims to disassemble this and, in turn, create a form of expression that is boundless.

The man behind the mask passionately believes that we are in control of our own world. His tenets seem to stem from many places, sometimes sounding part Kierkegaard-ian, as he exhibits an almost paradoxical blend of melancholy and idealism, of despair about the human condition and yet unbridled optimism about our purpose on Earth. Perhaps the most important thing to take away from how Fauves thinks is understanding that we are fallible beings, capable of making mistakes.
It is the redemption that makes us beautifully human.
Showing attention to human failings becomes a surer path to a happy and fulfilling existence than showing attention to a pursuit of perfection. In our current world, we’ve been handed a deck of cards and been told that playing them is our only option, and for a while, that was true. No longer.

In a rapidly evolving world, we have reached the point where a new world is no longer a distant possibility but rather a reality.

We have lived on farms, we live in cities, and now we will live on the internet.
The Metaverse gives us a second chance to make a world truly for the people, by the people. And in it, you can become whoever you want. This is what he aims to inspire within people with Avatar Skins.

“The main mission behind avatar skins is to make people discern their soul as an immortal being. Being able to project our essence in the form of omnific, artistic self-expression is where our true value lies.”

The human skin represents the suit that we use and wear during this journey called life, the voyage in which we are submerged in, in which we feel and take things to levels that go beyond the understanding of living.
So we have a skin that is part of our singular body, but in reality, we are constantly manipulating our image by the way we accessorize and cover our body; all the materialistic elements we tend to believe represent us and make our ego grow.
The skin is a journal representation of the many personalities and aspects surrounding the ideology of existence in this reality. Avatar skins are the introduction towards the new world. They provide a tool for expression in the new virtual reality. You can change your skin; therefore, you can change how you emote and how you want to represent yourself, evolving alongside you to create limitless avenues for expression. It is the beginning of a manifestation, a tool that can help you understand your true self.

Avatar Skins is a concept designed to awaken people. The main mission behind avatar skins is to make people discern their souls as an immortal beings. Being able to project our essence in the form of omnific, artistic self-expression is where our true value lies.
Therefore, coming into this new virtual world lets individuals realize that the skin in which they are right now is almost disposable, and what really has value is the divinity within their human essence. This essence is allowed to experiment, fail, succeed, change, and disrupt. But, most importantly, an essence that is unapologetically and undoubtedly yours.

John Paul Fauves Is Represented by Chic Evolution in Art Gallery

Read the full article in Art Market Magazine Issue #76