• Vhils, Heritage #1, 2022

    Vhils

    Heritage #1, 2022

    In Portugal, "azulejos" are everywhere, like a second skin enveloping the city. With this new body of work, Vhils revisits the tradition of these ceramic tiles to reinterpret them and, from a medium whose history is intrinsically associated with pomp and power, instead brings forth portraits of anonymous individuals.

     

    This new series of works provides a glimpse of the monumental commission that Vhils will create in ceramics for the future Orly Airport station as part of the Grand Paris Express, which will be revealed in 2025.

     

  • By dealing with ceramic and fire, the artist engraves faces, eyes, and expressions, making it possible for those individuals who live in the margins of the city to be the every day heroes. Those who deserve to have monuments dedicated to them are the ones who the majority of us don’t know their faces.
  • [On Show] VHILS

    Spectra - Solo Show - Paris
    • Photo João Mau
      Vhils
      Reflex #2, 2023
      Embossed glazed ceramic tiles
      13 x 10 tiles
      185 x 142 cm
      72 7/8 x 55 7/8 in
      View more details
    • Vhils Spectra #5, 2023 Embossed glazed ceramic tiles 10 x 7 tiles 140 x 100 cm 55 1/8 x 39 3/8 in
      Vhils
      Spectra #5, 2023
      Embossed glazed ceramic tiles
      10 x 7 tiles
      140 x 100 cm
      55 1/8 x 39 3/8 in
      View more details
    • Vhils Spectra #1, 2023 Embossed glazed ceramic tiles 10 x 7 tiles 140 x 100 cm 55 1/8 x 39 3/8 in
      Vhils
      Spectra #1, 2023
      Embossed glazed ceramic tiles
      10 x 7 tiles
      140 x 100 cm
      55 1/8 x 39 3/8 in
      View more details
    • Vhils Spectra #4, 2023 Embossed glazed ceramic tiles 10 x 7 tiles 140 x 100 cm 55 1/8 x 39 3/8 in
      Vhils
      Spectra #4, 2023
      Embossed glazed ceramic tiles
      10 x 7 tiles
      140 x 100 cm
      55 1/8 x 39 3/8 in
      View more details
    • Photo João Mau
      Vhils
      Reflex #1, 2023
      Embossed glazed ceramic tiles
      13 x 10 tiles
      185 x 142 cm
      72 7/8 x 55 7/8 in
      View more details
    • Vhils Spectra #2, 2023 Embossed glazed ceramic tiles 10 x 7 tiles 140 x 100 cm 55 1/8 x 39 3/8 in
      Vhils
      Spectra #2, 2023
      Embossed glazed ceramic tiles
      10 x 7 tiles
      140 x 100 cm
      55 1/8 x 39 3/8 in
      View more details
  • Shiny squares the size of an open hand with blue and white scenes, flowers, and patterns are everywhere to be seen in Portugal. In the home country of Alexandre Farto aka Vhils, entire walls, interior of houses, churches, and public monuments are covered with tiles of all sorts and colors. They tell old stories, embellish the urban landscape, and extol religious figures. As much as they are small, they are resistant and have experienced uncountable urban transformations for over 500 years of Portuguese history. They are one of the most remarkable skins of Portuguese cities.Vhils’ practice is very much about appropriating himself on such surfaces. If the city is an organic, alive, and complex body that is in constant mutation, its skins are the urban landscape, where old and new, past and present, tradition and rebelliousness co-exist. In Portugal, centuries-old murals exist side-by-side with colorful tiled walls by contemporary artisans, as well as they share the same time and space of urban expressions like graffiti art, tagging, and billboards. Despite such ambivalences – or exactly because of them – cities are dynamic and brimming with shades of all colors.

  • GRAND PARIS EXPRESS - PARIS ORLY STATION

    VHILS & ARCHITECT FRANCOIS TAMISIER
  • For the Orly Airport train station, designed by the architect François Tamisier, the Portuguese artist Alexandre Farto, also known as Vhils, from the urban art scene, explores the mutual shaping process that exists between the city and its inhabitants. In this monumental work using azulejos (traditional Portuguese ceramic tiles), faces emerge and blend into the city's fabric, highlighting the diversity of its residents and its territories. Each one seems to contribute to the formation of the identity and character of the other.
    Title: URBAN LAYERS
    Location: between levels -1 and -2
    Materials: azulejos - Portuguese ceramic tiles
    Dimensions: 11,132 azulejos tiles on a fresco 35 meters long and 7 meters high, covering approximately 245 square meters
    Date : 2025
  • Alexandre Farto, a.k.a. VHILS, was born in 1987 in Portugal. He became active in Lisbon in the early 2000s in...
    Alexandre Farto, a.k.a. VHILS, was born in 1987 in Portugal. He became active in Lisbon in the early 2000s in the world of graffiti artists. In 2008, he was invited by Banksy to participate in the Cans Festival in London, where his work was immediately hailed as one of the most innovative in recent years on the urban art scene. He now regularly presents exhibitions in major institutions around the world, such as the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the CAFA Art Museum in Beijing, or the Contemporary Art Center of Cincinnati, where his first monographic exhibition in the United States was held in 2020. He lives and works between London and Lisbon.
    Hammers, chisels, corrosive chemicals, electric perforators are his tools of choice. The creation of a new piece typically involves banging on it, scouring it, drilling through it, even blowing it up with explosives. Instead of adding to a surface, VHILS removes parts of the successive layers that make up a wall or a facade. Successive layers with their particular colors and textures that bring in a wide range of different shades to the whole composition. But the artist is far from only doing walls, he works on discarded doors found on the street, metal sheets, blocks of concrete, accretions of advertising posters... Whatever the medium, each piece is given the same sort of treatment, receiving the mark of what he calls an aesthetic of vandalism.
    This very act of carving through the thickness of things, which he refers to as scratching the surface, is for the artist a gesture loaded with meaning. "In this act of excavation," he says, "it is the process that is expressive, more than the end result." All those superimposed layers are the memory of the city, the memory of the transformations, developments, renovations that outline its history. For the artist, to reveal those layers is to render visible the developments of our societies.
     
     
     
  • Vhils incorporates ancient tradition into his practice but also reinterprets it, redefines it, and imbues it with meaning by confronting it with his history and cultural identity.
  • Backstage - Making Off

  • WALLS AROUND THE WORLD

  • PUBLIC ART