Interview: Street artist Alexandre Farto aka VHils

Rounding up this weeks Street Art Special is our interview with Portuguese graffiti artist, Alexandre Farto- aka, VHills. After carving a face in the wall next to a Bansky piece at the Cans Festival, Alexandre’s popularity increased. Known for his statement images of faces (most of which are famous people) around the world, Alexandre definitely knows how to catch your attention.

PlanetNotion: The first of your works I saw was just off Brick Lane, here in London. Did you do that using explosives? How does that work? Who’s faces are your pieces based on?

Alexandre Farto : The Brick Lane piece, was not made with explosives. In the explosives project I first carved the images into pure cemented walls and then I use plaster(which is weaker than pure cement) to attach some explosive charges. In the end I cover all of the drawing and blow it up. It´s all filmed with a slow motion camera, in this case a Phatom Miro ex4. In the end we give some adjustments to the speed and video corrections in Post-Production. The faces are from people who have in common living in big city, the idea is to work on the profusion of layers that compose the structure of the forms and objects of our urban cultural universe are taken as an allegorical representation of the accumulation of individual and collective experiences in the course of the historical process which, following a manifestly destructive formalist practice, aiming to remove in a symbolical act of archaeology. Yet, where in the previous series of my work expressed in the concept of “Scratching the Surface”, the work on street posters, walls and other derelict surfaces aimed at expressing and representing the search for an essence lost under those layers, in this video and Project I call “Detritos” I propose to explore in an even more intense way, resorting to processes that are even more brutalist, the fragility and volatility of the cultural constructs of civilisation and education in the contemporary condition of the large urban centres, in which the intensification of social and economic pressures can easily crack the glossy varnish that covers the surface and the appearance of things, bringing to the surface primal and raw manifestations which in times of stability and comfort are relativised and forgotten, buried in the distant past, perceived as duly tamed and stabilised: extremisms, social conflicts, xenophobia, economic protectionism, convulsions, relationships of exploitation and domination, etc.

PN: What’s your background?

A: I grew up between the south-bank suburb of Seixal, and central Lisbon, in Portugal. Lisbon is a city with its own rich history of street painting, mainly that which sprung up after the Revolution of 25 April 1974 that brought an end to the fascist dictatorship which had run the country during most of the 20th century. After the revolution, the streets became covered in political and non-political paintings, murals and stencils, it was quite unique in Europe, more like South America. But Portugal was perceived as a very strategic country and a NATO member, and some feared it would turn into a European Cuba, so there was a counter-revolution supported by Western Europe and the US. The country was turned into a moderate centre-right democracy, and from then on all those revolutionary murals were contrasted alongside Coca Cola ads. At the time no one really valued those paintings, and I ended growing up surrounded by all these decaying revolutionary murals that promised a utopian new world, in direct contrast with bright ads selling all the mod-cons of capitalism. All this overlapping and these contrasts between opposites had an enormous influence on my later work.

The first graffiti scene emerged in the late 1980s and since then it has expanded massively. I first got into graffiti in the late 1990s, and it was booming then. Nowadays the bombing and train scenes are quite big. Lisbon is a city were you can still paint fairly easy in contrast to northern European cities, and where you still see loads of graffiti and street interventions in the centre, especially around the old night district of Bairro Alto. The city council started cleaning up these areas last year and enforcing anti-graffiti measures, but there are still plenty of places to paint; a bit like what Barcelona was before the repression. The graffiti and street scenes are quite big there, but it’s all very alternative – there are hardly any galleries or shows, or brands taking advantage of the scene, there is no institutional support whatsoever, which is not necessarily a bad thing, as it basically means you have a lot of people doing it out of love.

PN: You use mixed media for your work. How long does it usually take you to complete a piece? Do you spend a lot of time planning?

A: Depends on the process, a big Wall 3 to 6 days, an explosion 1 month, a billboard a couple of hours…

PN: Your work on paper is extraordinary. The combination of the drips and the shapes that create the faces is amazing. How do you create that ‘abstract’ precision?

A: On those paintings I work with acid. In my work, I always try to have a fixed element (the stencil which is applied to the poster, the wall which is chiselled away), but also variable elements such as the nature of the materials which change and dictate the final form of the piece. It’s never me who determines the final form of a piece. I never have and never want to have absolute control over what I’m doing – I like the unexpected and the uncertain. I am interested in working with what one can’t control; it is this ephemeral character which I’m interested in exploring: the inconstancy and impermanence of matter. My pieces are in permanent transformation – an intentional transformation. The entire scope of human endeavour has been aimed at fixating, at creating institutional structures which can oppose change, maintain. And nature is the exact opposite of this, a permanent state of transformation, mutation, change. I’m interested not only in highlighting this ephemeral condition, but also in instigating it, in encouraging it.

PN: Out of all the projects and different media you have created, which do you enjoy most? Or is there a different satisfaction to each one?

A: Each process has it´s own beauty.

PN: You have travelled around the world, and left one of your ‘souvenirs’ in many places. What is street art in Portugal? Is it as well-known and appreciated as in, say, Berlin? Has it evolved over the years?

A: Graffiti first made its appearance in Lisbon in the mid 1980s, but it wasn’t until the late 1980s, early 1990s that the scene actually took off. For many years it was a very small scene with only a few dedicated writers, mainly those connected to the PRM crew, who spread it to the rest of the country. There was also a very low-key stencil scene in Lisbon during the 1980s. In the mid to late 1990s things exploded. Nowadays it is massively present in every city. Lisbon has been literally taken over by graffiti, and has a big train and street bombing scenes. There are also many talented writers, painters, designers etc, many of them connected with the urban art scene, which is very vibrant even if it’s not organized at all – there are hardly any galleries, collectors or brands cashing in on it yet, which on the one hand is rather good, as it’s still very much an art for art sake type of thing. It is still quite easy to paint out in the street, although the city council started a massive clean-up last year and is now enforcing anti-graffiti measures, especially around the centre and the old night-life district of Bairro Alto. At the some time I had been working on a Project called Crono with Angelo Milano, where we have some support to give derelict buildings to National and International artist´s to work on.

PN: Has any of your work had musical, political or cultural influence? Does it have a message?

A: Each body of work has its own message but very basically it comes down to this: I try focussing on the act of destruction to create, this is something I have brought over from graffiti. I believe we are all composed by layer upon layer of social and historical fabric. Our social system is the product of this same process of layers, and I believe that by removing and exposing some of these layers, in fact by destroying them, we might be able to reach something purer, something of what we used to be and have forgotten all about. It’s all very symbolical. So take it as a semi-archaeological dissecting of layers of history and culture, trying to understand what lies behind them, searching for an essence which has been lost somewhere along the path, and realising how ephemeral these layers really are. This process of removal has become rougher and rougher, from dissecting poster ads to excavating walls, with tools such as etching acid, bleach, pneumatic drills…raising issues, it all comes down to raising issues, making people think, question, search…

PN: The atmospheric music videos you have created with Orelha Negra show how you produce those beautiful works on walls. I think the collaboration worked really well. How did that come about?

A: I knew all of them for quite a while, we collaborated in several other projects, and they asked me to work on a video for them and I had this Idea I wanted to do for while, so I end up doing it with them. I´m also using the footage to my own Project

-Nina Hoogstraate