Graphium, is a major solo exhibition at the Ulsan Art Museum by artist Alexandre Farto aka Vhils. This marks the artist’s return to the city following his participation in a group exhibition in 2024, and presents an ambitious body of work that reflects on the intersection between memory, materiality, and the evolving identity of place. Taking the Bangudae Petroglyphs – soon to be inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site – as a conceptual point of departure, the exhibition draws parallels between prehistoric inscriptions and the contemporary urban landscape, bridging millennia through works that reflect acts of subtraction, erosion, and reinterpretation. Graphium will be on view until November 2025.
This project reflects Vhils’ ongoing commitment to meaningful international exchange, and underscores the scope and versatility of his practice across both public and institutional contexts. Marking a significant return to Asia, the exhibition affirms his position as one of the most original and compelling voices working in the field of contemporary art today.
Widely recognised for his distinctive visual language carved into city walls, Vhils is a leading figure in global contemporary art whose practice extends across continents and disciplines. From large-scale public artworks to institutional exhibitions in major museums and cities across the world, his work explores the layered nature of identity and the marks left behind by time, systems, and society. Whether working with explosives, billboards, or digital debris, Vhils consistently pushes the boundaries of creative storytelling.
Titled Graphium, the upcoming exhibition in Ulsan invites visitors on a narrative journey guided by an “invisible voice” shaped by the region’s cultural memory. A dialogue is established between ancient traces and contemporary experimentation through a broad selection of media: billboard-based sculptures, cityscape video installations, filmed explosive interventions, ceramic works, and a new digital piece created from the fragments of a demolished Ulsan building. These are presented alongside prehistoric tools loaned from the city’s Archaeological Museum, further enhancing the exhibition’s temporal and material contrasts.
As part of this wider initiative, Vhils in 2024 and 2025 was invited in Ulsan city to create public artworks. These two large-scale bas-relief carved murals will build on the artist’s growing presence in the city, following the public intervention completed in 2024, and will become part of his global Scratching the Surface series – an international body of work developed across several countries that inscribes memory, identity, and shared humanity into the fabric of the urban environment.
August 14th to November 2nd, 2025
