EGS – additional information

Graffiti artist EGS’ show consists of two separate entities

Finnish graffiti artist EGS creates art that is processual, and it challenges us to consider just what art is altogether. Like many of his colleagues, he hides his identity. He started his career as a street artist in his teenage years in 1980s but is also a trained graphic designer. The letter combination EGS is at the same time an alter ego for the artist as well as a total artwork. 

Divided into two parts of gallery space, the exhibition manifests concepts like, migration, the in-situ concept in art, cyclicity, the use of power, the relationship between freedom and control, society, the polarisation of the world, gentrification, nostalgia, tolerance. The exhibition’s name This Could go on Forever refers to EGS cyclic art process from recent years. On the corridor wall outside the exhibition space, a process diagram illustrates the creation of the artworks and a map resembling a gameboard, EGSTONIA, indicates the locations of graffiti works and pathways between them.

Ghosts of my Past

The first part of exhibition hall contains the installation Ghosts of my Past. In it, murals painted on the walls are reflected on the surfaces of the mirrors forming the abstracted letter combination EGS. Over the years, the letters have appeared in desolated factories as well as at nuclear submarine ports in over 50 countries. Lately, EGS has painted works in derelict buildings in Estonia where he travelled already in his childhood in the 1980s. A nostalgic thought behind the works is to bring forgotten places back to life by painting.

This Could Go on Forever

The second part showcases the body of work by the name This Could Go on Forever which challenges the essence of art. Created in various media, it presents the travels of the three letters in various environments. It includes a documentary depicting the process, photographs of graffiti and three-part glass sculptures based on them. The glass sculptures are created by varying and reproducing the works previously spray painted and documented in Estonia.

Painting graffiti and making glass sculptures are linked with a certain amount of corporeality, adrenaline and sense of danger which are caused by the unpredictability of the process. The modernistic glass sculptures are made in Riihimäki, Finland. A completed sculpture travels along on the next trip to Estonia and it is a basis for a new painting which is documented. The never-ending process is like a door to the labyrinth of memories. On show are also documentary material related to the travels.