Who is the artist Vhils?
Vhils grew up in Seixal, an industrialized suburb across the river from Lisbon, the capital of Portugal, and was deeply influenced by the transformations caused by the intense urban development that the country underwent in the 1980s and 1990s. Alexandre Farto was particularly inspired by the way city walls absorb the social and historical changes occurring around them. In his large-scale murals and smaller works on wooden doors and panels, Alexandre Farto, also known as Vhils, combines detailed figuration with an involved material process: tearing or perforating, in order to make his images (predominantly portraits) inextricable from the material itself. With this subtractive process, Vhils unites elements of painting and sculpture and reflects on how the built environment absorbs changes and social development. Vhils He has exhibited in cities around the world and produced collaborations with several institutions, including the EDP Foundation in Lisbon, the Center Pompidou, the Barbican Centre, the CAFA Art Museum and the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego.
1.Compact Life - Lisbon, Portugal, 2006
The history of Alexandre Farto He started on the street at the age of 13, but quickly moved to a museum space when at the age of 17 he had his first exhibition with the Vera Cortês art gallery. With the idea of creating an agency business for artists, mainly young up-and-coming artists, Vera Cortês Art Agency emerged in 2003. The concept went well enough to invest in the opening of its own gallery, in 2006. With great optimism Vera Cortês, in this time of great creative frenzy accompanied artists – many of them little known at the time, such as Alexandre Farto (Vhils), and Daniel Blaufuks, focusing on the internationalization of the gallery.Vhils and gallerist Vera Cortês met in 2004. Alexandre Farto stated: “Betting on such a young artist “was a risk”. At the high, Vhils I was looking for a gallery that “respected my work. I didn’t want to be making canvases”, he recalls. Vera Cortês gave him the opportunity, in 2005, to do a small exhibition, starting a partnership that lasts to this day.
2.Scratching the Surface
One of the fundamental concepts of the work of Vhils resides in the act of destruction as a creative force, a concept brought from graffiti – a process of work through removal, decomposition or destruction linked to the overlapping of historical and cultural layers that make us up. In 2008 he participated in the Cans Festival in London, where his innovative excavation technique – which forms the basis of the “Scratching the Surface” series – was exposed to an international audience for the first time and received critical acclaim.Vhils stated: “I believe that, in a symbolic way, if we remove some of these layers, leaving others exposed, we can bring to light something of what we left behind." He uses explosives and pneumatic hammers to sculpt and give texture, a technique he has been developing But not only that, it also uses bleach, cleaning products, corrosive acids and coffee along with traditional sprays, stencils and paints.
3.Calçada (Portrait of Amália Rodrigues), 2015
Vhils It became known for the faces of unknown people but also important figures in the history of Portugal. An example of this is the public commission, a unique piece created in Portuguese cobblestone that pays tribute to the late Fado diva Amália Rodrigues (1920-1999). Located in the city center of Lisbon, the piece titled “Calçada” is a collaboration with the City Council’s paving team. Evoking Fado – the Portuguese urban musical genre par excellence – and the city of Lisbon that Amália sang so well, it is also a tribute to the pavilions themselves as the city's oldest urban artists responsible for the development of a unique decorative art that has become Portugal's visual identity.
4.Portugal, Throwback to the Future, 2016
“Portugal, Retrocesso ao Futuro”, an extensive multidisciplinary installation of Vhils and ±MaisMenos±, takes advantage of the poetic decay of the old installations of a metalworks in the center of Viseu to weave a striking reflection that starts from the reality of a post-financial rescue of Portugal to reflect on its condition of hostage to international institutions and loss of self-government, about the uncertainty that surrounds its future, but also about its relationship with Europe and its own future at a time when conflicting internal pressures seem to have taken it to the brink of the abyss, reviving historical tensions that were thought to be resolved and buried in the comfort of a comprehensive and harmonious model. A reflection that becomes current in the post-British referendum reality, which also explores themes such as the resurgence of populism, the north-south division, xenophobia and demagoguery, the relativization of the achievements of the European model which, despite everything, its flaws , needs to be renovated inside. A reflection, in short, on the future possibilities of Portugal and Europe at a critical historical moment.
5.Rupture
Vhils presented his work in more than 40 countries in individual and collective exhibitions, art interventions site-specific and projects in various contexts – from working with communities in Lisbon, Rio de Janeiro and Shanghai to collaborations with art institutions such as Center Pompidou (Paris), Barbican Center (London), CAFA Art Museum (Beijing), MAAT (Lisbon), Palais de Tokyo (Paris), Le Centquatre-Paris, (Paris), Victoria & Albert Museum (London), among others. An avid experimentalist, Vhils has been developing his personal aesthetics in a plurality of means, in addition to his sculpture technique: from stencil painting to metal engraving, from pyrotechnic explosions and video to sculptural installations. He also directed several music videos, short films and two theater productions.Vhils It is present analogically but also virtually, with some NFTs. The first consisted of a video that captured the exact moment in which the explosives that the Portuguese artist uses in his work – destroyed in the form of creation. The video was filmed using advanced slow motion, including 2000 frames per second, which offers a unique experience and perspective on Alexandre Farto's unique creative process. “Rupture” is part of META_VS: A CRYPTO ART EXPERIENCE IN 3 METAVERSES, an action by BEYOND THE STREETS that aimed to promote the artistic community on the blockchain through exhibitions, piece launches, exclusive artist collaborations and conversations on ClubHouse and YouTube. Vhils has been using everything from scalpels and chisels to drills, jackhammers and even explosives to destroy crumbling walls, revealing realistic faces of local and often marginalized residents. Now the artist has passed this message on to NTFS, being the first experience in Portugal with these cryptoactives.
