Walls
Walls first fascinated Vhils when, as a child, he encountered the fading political murals that had sprung up around Portugal in the wake of the 25 April 1974 revolution. They were also the first surface on which he began writing graffiti and, in this sense, were the gateway to his artistic practice, the place where he first expressed the visual dialogue he has been developing with the urban environment and its citizens. When he realised the potential of working with what was already there, instead of adding yet another layer to these saturated surfaces – to remove in order to expose – his current ideological foundation was formed.
For Vhils, walls are organic surfaces that absorb the history, vibrations, events, and the character of their surroundings. Their layers retain the marks of history, and as he carves into them he reveals more and more the identity of the city and the stories of its past.
The original bas-relief wall carving technique developed by Vhils is recognised today as one of his artistic hallmarks. Used in the context of the artist’s “Scratching the Surface” project, which he has been materialising in countless locations around the world, it is based on the concept of humanising the urban landscape, establishing a dialoguing condition between material and human elements.
Over the years, Vhils has also been creating large-scale mural compositions with recourse to a variety of other media and techniques, including pasted and carved agglomerations of posters, freehand or stencilled painting with spray paint, oil-based paint or water-based paint, tin-glazed ceramic tiles, or with more experimental techniques such as UV varnish and watered-down paint. Each of his wall pieces is uniquely adapted to the physical characteristics of the location.
