Fossils of youth: Philip Lindeman’s papier-mâché caps are a tribute to skateboarding and American advertising

Philip Lindeman’s work can be seen at Uniqlo, Hermés or the pages of The New York Times nearly every week. But what’s a little more hidden away is the illustrators own little universe of murals, sculptures and paper hats, the latter of which has been collected in a new zine. Simply titled Caps, the zine (which followed its own “mini-exhibition”) was made in ode to Philip’s teenage bedroom wall. “Growing up I was completely obsessed with skate culture. I’d watch skaters on VHS tapes and Kazaa downloads, stand in the skate shop staring open-mouthed at the rows of decks on the wall, studying the graphics from brands that had their own whole worlds – recurring characters, humour and mystery,” says Philip. “I drew their logos constantly, mixing them with my first graffiti sketches. I genuinely think that period laid the foundation for everything I do today visually.”

Caps is essentially a giant act of fandom and a celebration of being a collector. It tributes the impulse to customise, which is evident across skate brands and street fashion styles – caps have always been a way of repping which band or sports team you rocked with, be it Limp Bizkit or the Yankees. So, Philip decided to make the humble cap into the ultimate canvas, making use of its panels and self-contained fields that practically invite imagery. The result became imaginative remixes of all of his interests blended together: skating, graffiti, 90s cartoons and American advertising. Part cap catalogue part personal archive.

“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.