Vandalism (5 Blue Lines) Action #1 @ Andreas Pashias. 2014

- PASHIAS Andreas, Vandalism (5 Blue Lines) Action #1, 2014 (photo & vidéo*)

Live performance/installation

With the participation of Laurent Devèze.

Part of the exhibition ‘EIDOS : Un art contemporain de Grèce’

At Institut Supérieur des Beaux-Arts de Besançon

Besançon-France/March 2014

Duration: 20’’

Material: artist’s body, curator body’s, white trousers, graffiti spray can (blue colour)

Action: The audience is led by the exhibition’s curator into an empty space that is half brightly lit and half in the dark. The artist enters the space and assumes a position at the middle of the lit wall, whilst the curator approaches shaking a graffiti spray can of blue colour. Being already instructed to do so, the curator shapes five horizontal and parallel blue lines onto the artist’s torso beginning and ending at the wall’s surface, and joins the audience once the process has been completed. The artist remains still onto the united wall-body-wall drawing, before taking steps ahead in order to exit the shape. A process of walking/running back and forth in a straight line towards and into the audience, and returning again onto the wall whilst hitting his back, allows for the observation of the missing body figure in the wall drawing (video excerpt: Action #1). This process of ‘escape’ is repeated in an escalating pattern, until reaching a point of exhaustion that is observed when the artist hits the wall for the last time and remains there in order to recover from his panting breaths. In the end, the artist raises and cross his arms, before lowering his gaze to the floor and exiting the space. A photograph of the artist attached to the wall drawing is placed in the middle of the curator’s graffiti, at the position of the missing body, as the installation to be showcased for the exhibition’s duration.

Photographic Documentation: Rilène Markopoulou, Gabriel Vieille & Dominique Demangeot.

Video Documentation: Rilène Markopoulou

Curation: Laurent Devèze & Julien Cadoret