On a three-week tour across Europe, Name: joined the old-school graffiti game, using witty aphorisms to cleverly mark 12 European cities. Iconic locations in Milan, Zürich, Lyon, Paris, London, Amsterdam, Eindhoven, Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Maribor and Ljubljana were furnished with the tiniest graffiti art works, which are invisible to the naked eye.

"Already since the 1980s, the height of the New York City graffiti era, the graffiti scene has been marked by artists battling one another to demonstrate the superiority of their skills in terms of every possible parameter (size, color, number, new typography styles) and to occupy the best, most eye-catching spots with their works. In the ever-present street art battles for a graffiti artist's place under the sun, Name: has used clever moves to assert his visible position on the scene. By developing nanograffiti, the smallest graffiti in the world, he humorously surpassed other graffiti works in size – which is also a way of actually giving meaning to the existence of invisible graffiti in the city streets. Secondly, he positioned his graffiti on highly visible, extremely bold locations with heavy traffic, even in the biggest European capitals; for example, one of the street lamps next to the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, amidst all the city's hustle and bustle, now carries the sign "Veni Vidi Vici". Just like this Parisian triumphant inscription, other nanograffiti are also often directly referring to locations or iconic monuments in their vicinity, or to situations, in which their author has found himself during the journey." Anja Zver

During the time of the exhibition, Name: will place nanograffiti on several locations across Maribor. A tour of Maribor's nanograffiti, which are invisible to the naked eye in their actual size, is possible with the use of smart phones and QR codes placed on locations marked on the Maribor city map (in the gallery space and on the website).

Curatorial text

Web:
http://name199.wixsite.com/nanograffiti

More:




Project author: Name:
Nanograffiti made by: dr. Gregor Kapun
Video installation programming: Igor Trupina
Video installation electro-engineering: Vedran Budinski
Video editing: Plateauresidue
Curator of the exhibition: Anja Zver
Coproduction of the zine publication Kos 8: KOS
Technical support: Fotopub Association for Contemporary Culture

Production: X–OP
Coproduction: ACE KIBLA 2018

Support: Jožef Štefan Institute, Dept. of Complex Matter and Dept. of Electronic Ceramics, The National Institute of Chemistry, Ljubljana, and the Center of Excellence in Nanoscience and Nanotechnology – NANOCENTER for enabling access to a focused ion beam microscope and an inkjet printer for patterning nanostructures.

Special thanks: Martina Knavs, Gregor Kapun PhD, Igor Trupina, Vedran Budinski, Plateauresidue, Horak, Pubis, Fuil, Jean, Dolores Colores, Andrea & Leeron, Rocco and his brothers, Orbid, Danilo Milovanovic, Nataša Berk, Zakaj, Mrock, Brad Downey, Jasper Van Es, Epos 257, Lunar, MLS, Glass, Sasha Kurmaz, Mathieu Tremblin, Taiyo Onorato, Tadej Vindiš, Dušan Smodej, Ilaria Speri, Uroš Veber, Vid Vranjek.