Alexandre Farto aka VHILS | DANYSZ

Exhibitions
VHILS
Interval 22 May - 20 June 2026
Focusing on subways and trains as contemporary 'non-places' the artist Vhils opens his series on a tribute to Paris. In Paris, these underground and in-between environments generate a particular intensity, moments suspended between arrival and departure, solitude and proximity, routine and chance encounters. These fleeting intervals, Parisian moments lived in motion, form the emotional and conceptual core of the project.

Through this new body of work, the subway emerges not only as a physical setting but as a condition, one that reflects the rhythm and density of contemporary urban life. Matter acts as repositories of movement, silence, and human presence, where traces accumulate without ever fully settling into permanence.

A subtle yet significant shift occurs in this exhibition. Moving beyond portraiture, he introduces scenes and environments that capture the collective pulse of the city. It is a living structure continuously shaped by its inhabitants as a group. Through gestures, trajectories, and shared spaces, each individual contributes to the evolving texture of the urban landscape.
Artworks
Vhils
Interval Series #04, 2026

« It is in the anonymity of the non-place that the community of human destinies is experienced in solitude.»

- Marc Augé
By anchoring the notion of 'non-places' in Parisian transit environments, the exhibition explores how cities are shaped precisely through spaces that resist permanence and remembrance. It invites a pause within environments designed for speed, proposing another way of looking, not through monuments or landmarks, but through the transient moments that quietly define daily life.
Credits: José Pando Lucas

For this exhibition, Vhils works directly with the material fabric of the city. Fragments of Parisian billboards, metal structures used for political affichage, metro doors, and ceramic tiles are transformed through processes of carving, scratching, and excavation. These surfaces, marked by time, use, and collective passage, become both medium and subject. The gesture is not additive but subtractive: an act of revealing what already exists within the material, exposing layers of urban memory embedded in the itself.
WORK IN PROGRESS
Crédits: José Pando Lucas

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AN ONGOING AND LONG-TERM PROJECT...

In the Paris-Orly Airport station, “Strates urbaines” stands out and catches the eye. Composed of 11,000 blue and white azulejo tiles and measuring 34 meters in length, it depicts three details of Parisian monuments as well as anonymous faces. While the title of the work echoes the spirit of Vhils’ practice, which involves excavating the layers of time accumulated on walls, here he sets aside his usual drills, explosives, and chisels to explore a new technique: the azulejos, irrevocably associated with Portuguese Baroque. While they evoke an era when these wall tiles were a sign of prestige and wealth in Portugal, Vhils creates a rupture by portraying anonymous figures in a masterful and heroic manner.

The second part of VHILS' installation will be unveiled in 2027 on Line 18, featuring the Stade de France and the Palace of Versailles.
IN THE MEDIA
VHILS X COURRIER INTERNATIONAL
For the first time ever, Courrier International has given full creative control over its content to an artist. Alexandre Farto aka Vhils, has worked to produce this landmark edition, which includes a series of four special embossed covers.

For several months, Courrier international and Studio Vhils brainstormed ideas and worked together, in both Paris and Lisbon — from the graphic aesthetic to the editorial substance.

This is a a dialogue between a newsweekly that observes the world and an artist who interprets it through his craft.
Alexandre Farto aka 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 is being held in 2020. He lives and works in Lisbon.
OTHER PROJECTS
PYRAMIDS OF GIZA, EGYPT, 2025
'Doors of Cairo' is, above all, a reflection on connection — between people and their surroundings, memory and place, what endures and what fades. Each door carries its own story: layers of paint, scratches, fingerprints, and repairs, silent witnesses to the lives they once framed. They hold stories of use and endurance, traces of the people and places that shaped them.

'Doors of Cairo' is part of the fifth Forever Is Now project, a permanent exhibition organized by Art D'Égypte with the support of UNESCO. Vhils is the first Portuguese artist invited to participate in the project.

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Credits: José Pando Lucas
OTHER PROJECTS
Vhils: Fragments urbains, 2018

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