Alexandre Farto aka VHILS

Miguel Moore, ed., Pentimento: Alexandre Farto aka VHILS, Lisbon, 2020, pp. 520-521 (illustrated, pp. 520-
521)

The body of work based on layered advertising posters removed from the streets explores one of the most important concepts inherent to Vhils’ art: how these randomly created layers reflect not only the speed at which contemporary life is evolving, but also how the city and its inhabitants are locked in an endless cycle of reciprocal shaping.
Starting in 2005, billboards were the first medium that Alexandre Farto aka Vhils used to explore his carving technique, particularly inspired by the way city walls absorb the social and historical changes that take place around them. The creative destruction is his ideological foundation: the potential of working with what is already there. Carving to reveal.
Created by layering these posters on top of one another, obliterating the top layer with white paint, and lastly extracting an image by carving into the pile, these billboard artworks reveal a cityscape and two faces of anonymous people. While expressing the visual and architectural chaos of the urban landscape, these accumulated layers can also be seen as the epitome of the present-day consumer culture of imposition, obsolescence, and waste.