By: Louis Philip Ferra
PICHIAVO is the artistic duo from Valencia, Spain, made up of PICHI, a nickname for Juan Antonio Sánchez, and AVO, also Álvaro Hernández, who met in the streets of La Terreta in the first five years of 2000, while using paint cans to graffiti the city.
The Valencian duet that in a short time and with great results has toured several countries in Europe, the Middle East, Oceania and North and South America, works on small and large dimensions, and does painting as well as sculpture.
Regardless of the formats and modalities, the value of his impetuous proposal lies in having achieved a mix between the cultured and the popular, between the past and the contemporary, and between the status quo and radicalism.
While the XNUMXth century established conclusive categories for classical art and graffiti —the first sheltered in museums and the second, surrendered to the metropolitan weather—, the Janic understanding (of the Roman god Janus) with which PICHIAVO works conceptually, it has allowed him to overcome apparent contradictions: coniunctio oppositorum is the old term for the union of opposites.
Graffiti, associated with anarchist messages and obscene graffiti in bathrooms, alleys and public transport stops, becomes intellectualized; while the Greco-Roman pantheon, repository of the Rubens, Alma-Tademas, Checas, Regnaults, Tiepolos and Velázquez, is desecrated.
Non-dualistic thinking, what the scholar Arthur Koestler calls “bisociation”, is capable of conceiving a concept and its opposite in unison without conflict in between; with which, PICHIAVO's work stands as an amazing apology for the syncretism between the classical canon and street spray painting.
PICHIAVO. Photo: Irene Ferrando
Urban Mythology
In an interview with FAHRENHEIT° Magazine, this is what PICHIAVO shares with us:
FM: PICHIAVO's artistic proposal is self-explanatory. But the same thing does not happen with the creative lighting phase, with the so-called “Eureka!”, that precise moment in which they decided to make one of the classical world and the urban environment. How it happened?
PICHIAVO: In our beginnings, which were around 2004-05, we began with the search for the style that would define us as artists. We experiment from realism to comic, trying various pictorial directions. From the beginning we had that inclination for the classic, we used these motifs many times in our murals. All that search for identity as artists was reflected in the works we painted in the street.
In a more natural way, we began to work in the studio format and in that search, we tried to mix both passions, which were the aesthetics of graffiti and classical sculpture. That dialogue seemed to us a form of expression that many of us said. The first time we painted in this style in a large format was in Almería, Spain, at a festival-contest. Although it was not until 2014 in Belgium, at the North West Walls festival in Werchter, where there was more international repercussion. Some time later someone would coin our style as Urban Mythology, but we're not big fans of labels.
FM: PICHIAVO has had the opportunity to move in two unfriendly registers: the manifestations of street art —sometimes marginality and illegality—, which is in the category of what is considered popular (lowbrow). And on par with collaborating with top firms in the fashion industry or car brands, which are located in the quadrant of the selective (highbrow). Discursively, isn't it conflicting?
PICHIAVO: It is interesting how our art brings together two apparently antagonistic worlds and we are very aware of it. We always say that our works appeal to different generations, the young people of graffiti and streetwear, and someone more adult who cultivates his taste for art through classical culture and history. It is precisely this mixture that makes our work so attractive. Our works are in fact on the cover of classic culture school books and we have received an award from the University of Valencia for spreading the classics among the youngest. We believe that it is not conflicting at all, especially now where the generation that is already in its forties grew up with graffiti and other elements of urban culture. It is a new form of sculptural visualization that fits perfectly with the time in which we live, an era where the visual is very present and has so much importance.
Photo: Irene Ferrando
classic boost
FM: In popular knowledge the idea persists that ancient statuary was white and marble... It is perhaps the specialists and Hellenophiles who are aware that Greco-Latin art had pigment. In PICHIAVO's artistic corpus, the color palette is consistently bright and colorful. What discourse is hidden behind so much color?
PICHIAVO: Our work creates a parallelism with the lost polychromy of classical sculptures, it could be considered a contemporary polychromy. Graffiti is colour, it is the counterpoint to white marble. In a more theoretical way we could enter into the question that white is light and does not exist as color. All white has colors, you just have to know how to see them.
FM: In more ways than one, the Greeks and Romans continue to fascinate man today. His decisive contributions in the political, theatrical, philosophical, astronomical, rhetorical, architectural, historical and medicinal fields clarify the reasons. What, of the entire Greco-Latin universe, attracts you the most and for what reason?
PICHIAVO: We are passionate about the classical world, about everything it has given us. Our city, Valencia, was founded by the Romans, like many other Spanish cities. Our culture and language come from the Romans, in this way we consider that our identity has a direct relationship with the classical world. Perhaps what most attracts us is the artistic dimension, as is evident: beauty, proportions, naturalism, architecture, sculpture, colors... And of course, mythology. The way they had to tell stories, to educate, to inspire people, and the different deities, each with their own personality and universe. We are fascinated by that.
FM: In the West Link project, a tunnel that will connect several stations in the Swedish city of Gothenburg, they painted Zeus-Poseidon, a large-format work based on the bronze sculpture that is housed in the Archaeological Museum of Athens. What are the implications of displacing and recontextualizing classical art in the streets?
PICHIAVO: That work, indeed, focuses a lot on the sculpture of Zeus/Poseidon. We saw the format of the wall and we thought that the time had come to paint that sculpture. The location of each project is also important; In this case, as the mural is next to a canal, the image of Zeus/Poseidon gains more strength and emphasizes the message of the sculpture itself. Visibility here was very important. It was a way of connecting him with space and with the city. In Gothenburg there is a sculpture of Poseidon, and it meant making our own version of something iconic for the city, and AVO had just recently been to Greece taking photos of that sculpture.
We do not intend to displace or recontextualize sculpture, but rather to give it a new dimension with our colors and graffiti, and to amplify the image of this classic icon through our contemporary language. We are sure that many young people did not know the sculpture and perhaps seeing the mural on networks or in the press, a new door to the art of ancient Greece will have been opened.
Photo: Irene Ferrando
FM: What would Lisipo and Mirón say about PICHIAVO when faced with the reuse of classic images in street art? Speaking of canons, are there rules that PICHIAVO cannot exceed or break?
PICHIAVO: Well, we hope they like what we do! We follow those canons. At the end of the day, we have academic training in the arts and we try to ensure that our works are well produced. We continue to be guided by academic ratios. In the apparent chaos there is also a classic order, although it is also true that there could always be different options, perhaps he would see that there are other paths and not just the straight line to get to a place. Perhaps this is where we can talk about breaking rules and experimenting to obtain apparently academic results.
FM: Between primary sources —Homer's Odyssey or Ovid's Metamorphoses—, and secondary sources —Werner Jaeger's Paidea or Robert Graves's Greek Myths—, there are tons and tons of texts about that world called classical. Is there a text (or texts) that you turn to most frequently to address your work? If so, for what reason?
PICHIAVO: Yes, it can be said that there are texts that have had more importance in our work. In addition to the fundamentals, The Iliad and The Odyssey, in 2019 we did a great project based on Aristophanes' Peace. The great sculpture (falla) that we made for Las Fallas de Valencia was an allegory of peace based on the main character of this comedy, everything revolved around this classic work. Recently, we also did a play based on the concept of the education of Eros, about which there is a lot of literary material. It is essential to go to the texts to inspire our work, they are an inexhaustible source of characters, references and elements from which we can drink.
Photo: Irene Ferrando
Ovs Graffitum
FM: By mixing fine art and urban art, not only styles converge, but also diverse audiences. What does PICHIAVO know about them? And how does the duet get feedback from what is said and done on the street?
PICHIAVO: After several years, we know the preferences of our public. They like the movement, the intense colors, the epic in our characters, the drama, but we try not to be at the mercy of this, we don't want to feel limited by what can work better or worse. In fact, many times we are motivated to continue exploring along opposite paths: much more aesthetic female figures, different planes such as portraits, stillness, details, etc. We believe that we have to continue exploring our style and the binomial graffiti + classic art from many other perspectives, techniques and styles, regardless of what our public wants.
With the passage of time we also change our work methodology in the process of an exterior work. At the moment of painting and after analyzing the reaction of the public that interacts with our work, we decided that this process would be different to generate a dialogue and an impact on them. Before we painted the classic figure and on it, the graffiti letters, already creating a visual kindness from the beginning. Now, on the contrary, we work on the graffiti first and little by little we make the classic figure emerge. This causes a visual impact, since the viewer hardly sees graffiti letters during the first days of the mural, which generates controversy, a debate about what is aesthetically accepted. In short, what is interesting as artists is the search and experimentation, that motivation is what makes us grow as creators.
FM: The PICHIAVO couple has declared themselves openly and publicly as indebted to the Greek myths. In these times full of currents restless to know the "truth", in love with science and infested with fact checking, what is the use of recovering past narratives of events that never happened or that are simply of the fictitious order?
PICHIAVO: It is true that the current moment we live in is not very grateful to myths, superstition or religions. We are aware that some myths today are difficult to interpret, but naturally we are left only with the positive of them: the moral, the message, the beauty of the story, the cultural load that is in them. Myths must not be taken literally, they must be interpreted and the historical context in which they originated must be taken into account. We have been censored on more than one occasion because the sketch was based on one of the classic kidnappings (Proserpina, Sabinas, etc.) and we didn't like the ban at all. Just like in some countries they tell us that they don't want full nudity that includes genitals. Covering up sculptures in museums would be an aberration, we believe that this limitation is just as serious.
FM: The solo artist agrees to his own method of work, sometimes relaxed, other times, of extreme rigor. As it is a creative duo that started back in 2007, I dare to glimpse continuous management and organization conflicts. How has your workflow changed? Do you have defined who does what in the creation process or is it random-improvisational?
PICHIAVO: The truth is that we have always worked comfortably together, otherwise we would not have embarked on this adventure. We always say that two heads work better than one, and we still think the same. Currently, we have a larger team, one person is in charge of management and project management, and we also have assistants to produce the works with us, so we have other opinions besides our own. Between the two of us, PICHI and AVO, we don't divide tasks mechanically, we both do everything and we constantly exchange work to be more dynamic and not fall into monotony. This is how we work, with order, but giving room for improvisation.
FM: With everything and the ideological opening of the XNUMXst century, opting for art as a way of life continues to be a challenge in the social and economic order. What have been the biggest obstacles that PICHIAVO has faced in defending its artistic approach?
PICHIAVO: Without a doubt, the stigma against graffiti has closed us and continues to close many doors for us, we have no doubt about it. We believe that our art works very well, but that there is a ceiling that we cannot break, since there are certain galleries or institutions that would not bet on our art by including graffiti or spray paint. In addition to this, street art is considered in some circles as a minor art, and that limits our growth. There are, however, great recognized artists who began painting in the street. Over time we will see how our career evolves, we believe that it will depend on our quality and performance as artists. We hope that you are not dependent on choosing to employ one technique or another.
Photo: Irene Ferrando
FM: In the documentary Creative Process by Agustín Ríos López, filmed in the context of his intervention in the Valencian fallas of 2019, AVO says that stylistically PICHIAVO "is a summary of our generation". What do you mean?
PICHIAVO: Our art is a reflection of our generation, we can combine graffiti and classic art and it makes sense. Graffiti, in our way of thinking, is something natural and the way of approaching art and high culture is also different for people of our generation. Today you go to the opera to see Wagner and the scenery places the characters in a building under construction... Or the most classic fashion firms launched into producing sneakers and with great success. That is what we mean, that what we do reflects very well the people of our generation. By saying that we are a generational summary, we allude to the fact that in our youth graffiti was booming; it was consolidating as something established in the urban environment. By adding the classic part, we managed to unify concepts that surround our generation.
Gradus ad Parnassum
FM: Validation for the non-exalted artist (from the merely popular to the strictly institutional) is a serious problem. In your best opinion, what do you think was the work that opened the doors of the artistic circuits for you?
PICHIAVO: While it is true that all the works have contributed, some have been essential in opening a niche for us on the international scene, from the one in Vícar, Almería, to the Poseidon in Mislata, Valencia, which was one of the most publicized together with the one in NorthWest Walls from Belgium. They are all important, but we have special affection for the Poseidon of Mislata, which we painted in 2012, and it remained an iconic piece of our career. It had a lot of repercussion and this caused it to be published in different media, causing us to start calling from many places to work. But it was in 2014, when we painted a container structure for the Werchter festival in Belgium, that we decided to dedicate ourselves professionally to art. Since then we have done some projects with a lot of projection, such as the municipal Falla of Valencia in 2019 or the Montreal mural for the Mural Fest also that year.
FM: Australia has a thriving street art scene. However, the British heritage and its Victorian streak are also present. The Hellenic Museum in Melbourne, which is usually a conservative space, made room for its exhibition Renegades. What was your proposal about?
PICHIAVO: The project spoke of renegade women in classical mythology, trying to value those characters who were dismissed as negative in mythology but who have significantly transcended throughout history, even in the popular culture of our time. In fact, one of those characters, Medusa, is the protagonist of some of our most recent works. It was a very interesting proposal by the Hellenic Museum in Melbourne.
FM: At the Nalata Festival in Sao Paulo they presented La Venus de Milo, a large-format work that celebrated the 200th anniversary of the discovery of this piece. When they arrive in another country, they not only transport their art, but also look for native collaborators and start a dialogue with the host city. This is what happened in Brazil with the use of pichação, for example. How has the dialogue and reception been in other nations?
PICHIAVO: It has been a very special project: our first time in Latin America, a key city for urban art and, above all, the dialogue between our art and pichação. Our idea was to invite several local pichação writers to work with us on the graffiti part of our work and also have them featured prominently in the mural. We didn't feel good about being invited to legally paint graffiti in São Paulo, when many of the graffiti artists are persecuted for doing pichação. The result was incredible, an unforgettable experience, they were very happy to be part of the project and we made good friends.
FM: PICHIAVO fundamentally becomes known for its grandiose proposal in the streets. However, it is known that they are also studio artists. In other words, they have works in small format. PICHIAVO recently opened a studio with several facilities, what is the space about and what does it offer?
PICHIAVO: We recently moved to a new studio, in Manises, on the outskirts of Valencia. It is bigger and better, renovated to our needs, with natural light and where we feel comfortable to work and expand our team. It is like one more step in our career and that is how we wanted to transmit and communicate it: we have thought about it and reformed it with great care and detail. It is mainly a place of work and creation for our team.
Techne
FM: The Internet and its possibilities have disrupted every square centimeter of human reality, art is not exempt from its influence, in your case, in what sense has this technological tool had an impact?
PICHIAVO: We use all possible digital techniques to create our works, either as tools or even as an end, since we are preparing to launch our first NFTs (non-fungible tokens). In the case of NFTs, digital tools allow us to expand our art to digital format, video and animation, which enriches our work. One of the bases of the PICHIAVO process is digital work, we believe that it would be absurd to escape from it, we are aware of the time and the digital age in which we live.
FM: The romantic idea of the self-made artist, who gets his language from street experience, seems to have waned with the democratization of higher education. Contrary to what people might assume, both PICHI and AVO are classroom-trained artists, what was the use of PICHIAVO going through the academy or art school under a formal education system?
PICHIAVO: We believe that we are not the best people to talk about academic training to be an artist, but it is part of the experience and the path to being one, at least in our case (PICHI, studied Fine Arts and AVO, product design). We believe that studies open the door to knowledge and this leads you to be more professional and efficient, since you discover methodologies and ways of working. We do not believe that it is essential to have studies in art and creation to be an artist, but the more knowledge, the better.
