Vhils: Selected Editions 2008–2024
For close to two decades, the Lisbon-born artist Alexandre Farto has worked under the name Vhils, carving portraits and images directly into the plasterwork, brick and concrete of city walls. His practice is rooted in destruction as a form of revelation, drawing faces from the accumulated layers of urban surfaces. A new exhibition at MUDE explores a different and equally revealing dimension of his work.
Selected Editions 2008–2024 gathers printed and limited edition works from across the full span of his career to date. Far from peripheral or commercial offshoots, the exhibition presents editions as a central mode of working: a space for experimentation, for exchange with other artists, and for reaching audiences beyond the usual confines of the gallery. By engaging with formats more commonly associated with graphic design and advertising, Vhils and his collaborators bring an expanded range of visual languages to bear on his practice.
Art Beyond the Unique Object
One of the recurring questions in the exhibition is what an artwork can be. Editions have traditionally occupied an ambiguous position between art and reproduction; here that ambiguity becomes a subject in itself. The works challenge the assumption that rarity is a precondition of artistic value, and position the multiple as a vehicle for genuine creative work rather than simply a means of wider distribution. Collaboration runs through everything: between artists, between disciplines, and between the gallery and the street.
Tiles and Memory
Alongside the editions, the exhibition presents the Clay Tile Collection, an initiative that brings contemporary artistic practice to the azulejo. One of the most recognisable materials in Portuguese visual culture, the tile is reconsidered here through proposals that innovate in both technical and formal terms, developed in collaboration with ceramicists, designers and architects. For Vhils, whose practice has always centred on the reading of surfaces and their accumulated histories, the tile is a natural territory. It carries centuries of collective memory and decorative tradition, and remains, in his hands, something still capable of surprise.
Plan Your Visit
The exhibition runs until 3 May 2026. The museum is open Tuesday to Thursday and Sunday from 10 am to 6 pm, and Friday and Saturday from 10 am to 8 pm. The museum is closed on 25 December and 1 January, and closes at 4 pm on 24 and 31 December.
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