PICHIAVO, UNTITLED, 2018
Location: 10323 106 St, South Facing Wall
Standing four storeys tall and stretching 36 metres across, the mural, painted by Spanish-based artist duo PichiAvo in summer 2018, is stunning in both size and style. It’s the pair’s first mural in Canada, and like much of their previous work, it takes “mixing old and new” to the extreme by overlapping ancient Greek imagery with vibrant graffiti colour, portraying a pair of winged goddesses with laurel wreaths in their hands, watching for a worthy victor to anoint.
Many people are unaware that the chalk-white busts we picture when we think of Greek sculptures were colourful and bright in their day (as well, the Great Sphinx of Egypt was yellow, red and blue). As a tribute to their artistic kin of eons past, PichiAvo paints their statuesque subjects as we see them today, but use bright graffiti palettes to bring them to life. The goddesses and their horses look simultaneously stone-like and clear and, without PichiAvo’s adept use of shadow and depth, the mural might be tough to look at, like a graffiti-filled Magic Eye picture. Instead, it’s a magnificent motley that requires more than a moment to mull over
Biography: PichiAvo, a spanish based artist duo, are recognized for their ability to ignite relationships between art, sculpture, architecture, space and social contexts. Their style adopts a focus which is both beautiful and performative, firm in its discussion and totally the perfect deconstruction of classic art and contemporary urban art, in order to create a new fusion, which whilst faithful to its classic heritage, creates a new and exciting vision of art. PichiAvo are one since 2007, fleeing from the self-centeredness of graffiti, united to create a single piece of work, reciting a conceptually urban poetry, born from the artistic formalism of the street, transferring fragments of a wall to the canvas and from the canvas to the wall in a personal version.
Sponsors: Rust Magic International Street Mural Festival
Sources: https://www.avenueedmonton.com/city-life/detours/arts-culture/conversation-piece-pichiavos-picturesque-mural/; http://www.pichiavo.com/pichi-avo/
Photo Credit: Avenue Edmonton