About the artwork
In Layer, Vhils continues his exploration of urban memory and the process of revelation through matter. As in his previous creations, the artist works with layers of silkscreened paper, which he wears, scrapes and tears away, revealing a complex network of textures and colors. Here, the composition is distinguished by the presence of a gaze emerging through the graphic density - an eye half-concealed by strata of lines, splinters and traces. This figure, both human and spectral, seems to observe from the depths of matter, like the memory of a face buried beneath the surfaces of time.
The superimpositions of colors - yellow, silver, black and bluish - evoke the walls of a city saturated with posters, graffiti and successive erasures. Each mark bears the trace of a gesture, a passage, a disappearance. Layer II thus appears as a poetic cartography of the ephemeral, where the surface becomes a vibrant palimpsest of memory and silence.
Expert opinion
With Layer, Vhils confirms his ability to strike a sensitive balance between destruction and creation. By transposing his mural language to the medium of paper, he transforms screen printing into a field of plastic experimentation: each tear, each burst of ink becomes an act of sculpture. The presence of the eye, a recurring motif in his work, introduces an introspective dimension - that of the gaze that observes the world, but also that of the world that looks back at us.
This unique piece embodies Vhils' philosophy of revealing the beauty hidden in that which is destined to disappear. Layer II captures the raw energy of the city while revealing its fragility, offering a meditation on the passage of time, collective memory and the persistence of the human in matter. The richness of its texture and the depth of its symbolism make this work a masterly synthesis of the Portuguese artist's approach.
About the artist
Alexandre Farto, alias Vhils, Portuguese artist born in 1987. Lives and works in Lisbon (Portugal). He became active in Lisbon's graffiti scene in the early 2000s. In 2008, Banksy invited him to take part in London's Cans Festival, where his work was immediately recognized and celebrated as one of the most innovative on the urban scene in recent years. Today, he exhibits at major institutions around the world, including the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the CAFA Art Museum in Beijing, and the Cincinnati Contemporary Art Center, which is devoting its first monographic exhibition to him in the United States in 2020. Until September 2022, the MAAT (Museum of Art, Architecture and Technology) in Lisbon is dedicating a monumental, immersive exhibition to him, entirely focused on video. In it, the artist develops a new language, presenting an image of the city in slow motion.
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