Description: As part of the project "Gradient: From Gray to Color Scale" based on pubic intervention in the city of Ioannina, the exhibition "Graffiti hard!" was presented under the curation of visual artist PASHIAS, through the closed shops in the old agora of Ioannina and more specifically along Tsirigoti Street, where members of the public, the passerby and the city’s inhabitants could visit the artists' work at any time. The art of performance comes in contact with the art of graffiti, in terms of their common denominator - the artist’s body as the initiator of action aiming at the completion of an image. Considered as interventions in public space, both practices were initially introduced in the form of a 'sign' in communal areas. The exhibition "Graffiti hard!" unfolds as a video-installation, in order to explore the use of graffiti spray in performance. The approach to vandalism as a form of destruction is contrasted by the artist’s intention to 'create'. The artist internalizes such formats of public action by placing them within a private vicinity, as a process to be viewed by an audience, and by equating the surface of a wall with the skin of a body. At the same time, this video-installation proposes the image type 'GIF (Graphics Interchange Format)' as a form of presentation for performance, aiming at the exploration of this popular online format in terms of visual 'sign' in communal areas, as also seen in the case of graffiti. By combining the photographic instance with the duration offered by a video, this moving image transforms an isolated gesture into an eternal process.

Graffiti hard!

Group exhibition / Part of the event "Gradient: From Gray to Color Scale" / Tsirigoti Street's Shops / Ioannina - GR / July - 2014

Curation: PASHIAS

Artists: Margaret Dragu, Nikos Giavropoulos, Francisco-Fernando Granados, Irene Loughlin, Björn Neukom, PASHIAS, Emilio Rojas

Photo: Francisco-Fernando Granados by Tara McMullen