Alexandre Farto, better known as Vhils is a Portuguese street/graffiti artist who for his canvas uses abandoned and depleted buildings and creates large-scale portraits by way of scratching and chipping plaster off walls. His technique has been hailed as one of the most compelling approaches to art created in the street in the last decade.

Farto was born in 1987. He grew up in Seixal, near Lisbon and moved to London in 2007 to study at the Central Saint Martins (University of the Arts in London). He made his first graffiti at the age of thirteen, under the name of Vhils. He came under the spotlight, when one of his works was featured alongside a picture by Banksy at the Cans Festival in London in 2008.

He scratched his first portrait series called "Scratching the Surface" in 2007. Farto first paints the wall with his subject this makes it easy for him to scratch and chip the plaster off the wall. He uses drills, chisels, hammers and sometimes his own hands to remove the plaster. The result of his hard work is just amazing.

Farto has exhibited his work in a number of shows in and around Spain and Lisbon and has collaborated with different artists to work on different projects  like the Akademia Europeia de Hip Hop project created by the Khapaz Association in collaboration with the Lacos de Rua, Freestylaz and Encontros associations.

Farto has traveled all over Europe and even in to US to create his large-scale portraits. You can find his portraits in Moscow, Italy, London, Portugal and New York. He lives and works in both London and Lisbon.

To know more about Frato, read on our exclusive interview with him.

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1. Hello Alexandre, please introduce yourself to our readers.

My name is Alexandre Farto, I grew up in Seixal, a suburban town near Lisbon, the capital of Portugal, where I started painting illegal graffiti under the name of Vhils when I was around thirteen-years-old. Graffiti was really my first art school, as even today most of my work is based on techniques and concepts I came across or started developing back then. Over time I started exploring other tools like stencilling that enabled me to develop other lines of work and reach a wider audience. Due to my background in graffiti, I knew how to move about in the city and how, where and when to put up work, and once I made that transition, I realized the full potential of using the urban environment to work in. Somewhere along the way I also started organizing exhibitions and eventually started working with a few galleries, among many other projects and other fields of work I've explored.

2. We were most impressed with your wall graffiti? What prompted you to create the wall graffiti which had an sculpture like quality to it at San Pedro and later locations? What was the inspiration to create the same and how did you come up with the idea?

These wall carvings started out with the Scratching the Surface series in 2007. Most of my work is based on the notion of creative vandalism I have been exploring since my days as a graffiti writer, that's when I first came into contact with the use of abrasive and destructive tools and techniques for a creative purpose. The idea for this technique came to me after I began using agglomerates of billboards I would remove from the streets and started using by carving through some of their thick layers to create compositions, using a type of reverse stencil technique. When I started this, I noticed that fragments of older posters came to light, and I immediately connected this with my memory of the old walls in Lisbon that seemed to be steeped in history, as if the passage of time added new layers and buried some of the past beneath. Carving through these posters was like carving through layers of the city's recent history. I realized how chaotic life in the city is, how fast things change with the transformations of development and technology. As a child, I had been fascinated with the contrast created by the old political murals painted after the 25th April 1974 revolution and the new capitalist advertisements of the 1980s/1990s and I made a connection between all of this. I started using the stencil as a tool to dig into these layers, revealing fossils of contemporary culture. I eventually decided to apply the same type of technique to walls, and began carving them based on this same concept, which became a reflection on all the different layers that form us.



For the wall carvings I first trace a rough sketch with spray paint and ordinary paint, then I use hammers, chisels and Makita drills to carve the pieces, removing some of the surface layers. The large pieces usually take a few days working full-time. Usually at the rate of one storey per day.

4. What was the reaction that you got from the passersby who saw the graffities and what was the biggest compliment that you got for it? Which was your favorite creation?

People react in many different ways, most of them very positive, they become curious about what I'm doing, who I am portraying, etc. I think one of the best reactions I ever got was when some people thought I was actually cleaning graffiti off a wall which had been done with such special paint that I had to remove some of the top layers of the same wall in order to clean it...



It is natural for there to be some similarities between the different types of work as, despite some conceptual and technical differences, they end up sharing some of the fundamental ideas that form the backbone to my work as a whole. These carvings are done with Dremel rotary tools and chisels – it is essentially the same type of carving technique as the walls but on a different scale and with different tools and materials. The door is a symbolic element which at the same time expresses the connection/opposition that exists between two realities: the outside and the inside.

6. I loved your explosive series where you created graffiti using explosives. Where did you get the idea for doing this and where did you learn the technique to create such graffiti? Again what compliments did you get for it?

The use of explosives can be seen as a natural development from carving walls and other surfaces with industrial tools. At the time I was looking for a process that was even more destructive in order to emphasize a particular point – mainly that at times of social and economic crisis everything which we hold as certain becomes highly volatile. It's very easy during times of pressure for the glossy varnish that covers the surface of things to crack and explode. This is linked to the concept of layers I work with, which I view as composing the structure of forms, objects and people and our cultural and historical experiences. Working with explosives ended up being very demanding. I teamed up with a specialist in pyrotechnics and we experimented for some 8 months before we got everything right for the Orelha Negra video, which was the first video I did with this technique. Reactions to this first video were literally explosive, people were very interested and enthusiastic. It was very good.

7. The styrofoam inspired graffiti is so different from your other work. Was it inspired by your wall graffiti and how did you adapt the technique you used there on such a soft material as styrofoam? What were the people’s reactions to your styrofoam graffiti?

Yes, in some ways the styrofoam pieces (which form part of the Diorama series) were inspired by the portraits I have been carving on walls, but with a slightly different concept. With these, the idea is to explore the complex relationship people have with the environments they live in, in particular the urban environments. It's a reflection on the way people shape these environments while at the same time are shaped by them, locked in a cycle of reciprocal influence. The compositions consist of a three-dimensional styrofoam carving which from up close looks like a cityscape, but as you start to zoom out you start seeing a face, or vice-versa. It also plays with the light and shadow created by its intricate detail – it has many readings. These pieces are carved with a hot wire foam cutter based on a 4 stencil 2D image that turns into a 3D sculpture. People's reaction to this series was very good.

8. Your billboards are completely different to your other forms of art though some of them have a touch of your original graffiti? Are they a reflection of your mindset or are they commissioned pieces of art?

The billboards also have some points in common with the other bodies of work, as they also deal with this concept of carving through the surface layers of things to reveal what's hidden beneath. As I explained above, the work I began with the billboards eventually led to the Scratching the Surface series on walls. So there are some points of cohesion there. Working with stencils opened up a lot of new possibilities and even today I still consider it, together with graffiti, as the basis of all my artwork. In Portugal there is the habit of letting advertisement posters accumulate in the streets, as they are pasted over each other instead of being removed, and one day I became aware of their potential. I had been thinking about doing something with reverse stencilling – creating by removing layers instead of adding them – and this seemed like the perfect medium. I was also interested in trying out more abrasive tools, trying to bridge the gap between graffiti vandalism and art, exploring the concept of creative destruction. So I started carving stencilled pieces on these agglomerates of posters and things developed from there. I soon realized that fragments from older layers of posters were being exposed, and I began viewing this act like some form of contemporary urban archaeology. All those layers were pieces of contemporary history. I began regarding this method as a way of bringing these fragments to light and reveal something of the past that was buried beneath. In conceptual terms it became a reflection on all the different layers that form us as individuals within a certain culture. We are all subject to various influences that mark us and form a composite of layers that make us who we are and where we come from.

9. What are your future plans as as an artist? What other artists do you look upto? Any project that you would absolutely like to finish in this lifetime?

My future plans are essentially to keep on working! I have too many ideas to put into practice in this lifetime, but I'm aiming to carry on trying as much as I can. As for other artists, there are many whose work I admire, from graffiti writers and vandals to contemporary visual artists; I'll name just two who, at different times, had some impact on me: Banksy and Gordon Matta-Clark.

10. From what you have learnt as an artist what lessons would you like to impart to aspiring ones?

I always find it hard giving advice to other people, but I think the main things are to work hard, take your artwork seriously (without forgetting to enjoy what you're doing) and promote your work efficiently.

Alexandre, thanks for such an extensive interview. It was a great experience learning about you. Wish you good luck! 

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