TRACE│A RETROSPECTIVE EXHIBITION BY VHILS

Fluctuart is hosting the exhibition “TRACE” by Alexandre Farto alias Vhils in collaboration with the Danysz gallery. Vhils is a major artist from the urban art scene.

This retrospective retraces his entire career through old and new works, highlighting the various experiments in his creative process. Portuguese artist Vhils is known worldwide for his unique artistic language based on various printmaking techniques that he applies to a variety of media. Celebrated for his portraits carved with a jackhammer on the walls of our cities, Vhils is also the author of a vast body of work, a wide variety of which is presented here. Metal, wood, polystyrene or advertising posters offer him a limitless field of experimentation. Cutting out superimposed advertising posters with a cutter or scratching the “crust” of wooden doors with a chisel, Vhils creates fascinating works from which urban silhouettes and faces emerge. All these forms and works express the obvious and subtle links that govern the relationship between a city and its inhabitants and the need to preserve our share of humanity in the midst of a sometimes chaotic and furious urban agitation.

The exhibition

Rooted in a humanistic narrative, “TRACE” is a unique exhibition that brings together an eclectic assortment of works and presents them side by side in a single space, seeking to establish a visual dialogue and highlight their points of connection. Like a collection of present-day artefacts revealed by the artist’s subtracting hand, they refer to the tactile heritage and human memory of various places in which Vhils has worked. Expressively executed in a wide variety of media – from the cut and torn advertising poster to the acid-etched metal sheet, from the bas-relief carved wall to the hand-carved wooden door, to the hand-carved composition on plasterboard – this act of revelation and rehabilitation emphasizes the delicate nature and poetic charge of the essence they carry within them.

Exhibition visible from 22 June to 03 October 2021 on Fluctuart. 

More information here.