Alexandre Farto aka Vhils has long been known for his singular ability to carve through the chaos of the city - removing layers of material to reveal the silent presence of what lies beneath. Since the early days of his “Scratching the Surface” series, his work has explored the poetics of decay, using destruction as a creative act. In this new series, he returns to a single image, a single gaze, and submits it to multiple processes of erosion and revealing. Each piece becomes a study in transformation, not through addition, but through the deliberate act of breakdown.
Iterations #1, a giclée print, is after an original Vhils artwork that gives body to this series, which was hand-carved and laser-cut from the layers of billboards that Vhils has long used as a living archive of the city, working with accumulated strata of urban advertising found in public space. The second, a screenprint print hand-finished with acid, engraves the portrait through paint and chemical erosion, where time and substance slowly wear into the image. In the third edition, the artist uses an invisible screenprint paint to imprint the artwork. Here, the image emerges through exposure, not removal. Finally, Iterations #4 returns to the raw physicality of Vhils’ process: a screenprint print of an acid agent over a pre-handpainted canvas, in which the portrait is etched into the surface.
The woman depicted in each of these works faces the viewer directly, as if inscribing her own story onto each surface. Repeated, eroded, revealed, she embodies the anonymous figures who shape the cities quietly, without recognition. In Vhils’s hands, her image becomes a gesture of resistance and remembrance. A reflection on what is built, what is broken, and what endures.
Iterations #1, #2, #3, #4, 2025
Each an edition of 30
Medium: Giclée Print (#1); Screenprint, quick ink, and bleach (#2 & #4); Screenprint and quick ink (#3)
Sheet Size: 39 3/8 x 27 3/8 in. (100 x 69.5 cm)
Price: $3,000 each, unframed
