The Portuguese artist Alexandre Farto, aka Vhils, has been interacting with the urban environment for more than 15 years. His internationally recognised trademark is the forming of dramatic, oversized portraits made by carving directly into outdoor walls. The process often involves industrial methods such as drilling and controlled explosions and Vhils’s subjects are often formerly anonymous local citizens.

Thirteen years before Farto was born, activists — including his own father — liberated his country from a dictatorship, thus awakening hope and making it possible for Farto to experience freedom and become Vhils. As though reconstructing a story, Vhils started cutting through away portions of the successive layers of advertising posters that had appeared on the walls of Lisbon after the Carnation Revolution. Posters that had covered the liberators’ slogans of a nation finally free to express itself, to dream, to live.

He could have used a brush, a spray can or a marker pen, but instead he chose the hammer, a tool that can be used both to build and destroy, and one that felt natural in his hand. It allowed him to create a new way of writing urban poetry.

On run-down walls of the city, Vhils reveals and iconizes unknown faces, representing the beauty and spirit of a neighbourhood. They’re faces that become familiar but could quite easily be any one of the people you pass without noticing while you roam the same streets each day.

Vhils has invented his own creative path. He integrates explosives within his palette, arranging them as small strokes, like an impressionist artist would. The explosion does not only call into question the existence of the place, but also creates something in a fraction of a second. And after the chaos, when the smoke clears, a new work of art is born. Vhils often uses a camera to film this painless birth of his creation. The blast is indeed a magic work of art in itself, reminding us that the even the universe was born from a great explosion. Back then, only our creator could enjoy the show, now we have cameras, and after “REC” there will be always the “PLAY”, as there will always be Vhils.

Vhils has previously had solo exhibitions at Skalitzers Contemporary Art in Sydney, Clark Art Center in Rio de Janeiro and Lazarides Rathbone gallery in London, and has collaborated on music videos with artists including the Portuguese soul/trip-hop band Orelha Negra and U2. He will also feature in Street Art Show, opening at the Magda Danysz Gallery, Paris, on October 24.

Credits:

Words by Sophie Fauçillion and Julien Millet.

Images courtesy of Lazarides Rathbone gallery in London, Magda Danysz Gallery and Vhils Studio.