The pictures of Csaba Filp are characterised by the classic motifs of still life: vegetables, fruits, meat, animals, skulls etc. The inviting fruits and the other seemingly flawless pieces of food represent transiency; if we don’t consume them, they will rot, even if they don’t look like that. The dead animals and skulls also remind us to the disillusioning finality of life. The works of Csaba Filp can be placed in parallel to the Old Masters’ Vanitas pictures which propagated that everything in the world is illusion, vanity and would pass away. The topic itself basically is old, but the surface and the way of approach are of the 21st century. The baroque Vanitas pictures were characterised by opulence, crowdedness and pompousness. The artworks wanted to be spellbinding, at all cost, often using effects of optical illusion.
In the consumer society the advertisements and the shopwindows of the shopping malls would like to have a similar effect, to tempt the potential shopper with the dump of goods glittering in artificial light. In many cases the goods promise quality though they are only fakes. Csaba Filp’s timelessly illusionary piles of food, curling in garlands in their wrappings, also suggest that not everything is what it seems!
