Vhils│Entropy

An emblematic title for this first monograph in French by the Portuguese artist Alexandre Farto - alias Vhils - who, by sculpting portraits of anonymous people on the degraded walls of our contemporary cities, seeks not only to give a second life to these neglected supports , but also to shed light on ordinary citizens abused by a society that is changing at full speed, leaving them aside. To thus reverse this process of programmed erasure, that of things and beings, Vhils explored a new creative path. No longer, like the graffiti artist he was, using the wall as a simple support, but resorting to its very substance. No longer the aerosol can but the chisel, the jackhammer, even the explosive, to successively reveal the different layers that hide under the surface and bring out human figures in hollows and in volume. But Vhils also works indoors, then abandoning the wall for metal, wood, polystyrene or cork, each time experimenting with a new technique until he scratches the "crust" of dozens of superimposed advertising posters with a laser to create strange modern palimpsests from which again emerge urban silhouettes and faces. So many forms and works that tell all the obvious and subtle links that govern the relationship of a city with its inhabitants, and the need to preserve, in the "sound and fury", our part of humanity.