Street Artist Vhils Talks Deconstruction, Humanity & Decay
During strolls along Venice's trendy Abbot Kinney Boulevard or while visiting Post No Bills, you may have noticed a giant etching of a woman's face on the exterior wall of said gallery. The piece was masterminded and produced by Portuguese street artist Vhils as part of the gallery's European Bailout Show in July/August.
After months of waiting for his jet setter pace to slacken, we finally caught up with Vhils to ask him about the process, which was captured on video, and his favorite street artists.
What is the name of this piece?
The piece is part of a project which I have been working on for the last 3 years, called Scratching the Surface, which I started out in Lisbon in 2007 and have carried out in many other places around the world.
How long did this project take from start to finish?
The Scratching the Surface series is an ongoing project, but this particular piece took two days to execute.
Can you briefly explain your deconstruction process?
The process comes from the idea of reverse stenciling, based on the notion of creative destruction (which I have brought over from graffiti), the subtraction of layers to expose what symbolically lies beneath the surface of things, hopefully rendering the urban environment a little more human and embellished. The process itself involves painting a first sketch of the image or person I'm portraying on the wall, which is always rough as what counts is its main outline and overall shape, filling it in, and then getting down to work: hammers, chisels, jack-hammers - whatever it takes to remove the right parts so as to create volume, depth and above all contrast. This year I also did a series involving explosives, but these have greater impact on video, as the most important part of it is the process itself. This is also true of the rest of my work. The process is often more important than the outcome, as it conveys a great part of the message I'm interested in getting across.
Who assisted you?
For this piece I had the assistance of Alex, a good friend of mine. I usually work with a close group of friends.
Is this visage a representation of an actual woman in your life?
Not objectively, no. The majority of portraits I've created in this Scratching the Surface series have been based on anonymous, unknown people - people not even I know. I value the idea of turning ordinary people into icons, to contrast this with the need people seem to have of creating icons in the first place. Instead of creating icons out of people who have changed history or are celebrities of some sort, like what Warhol was doing with Mao Zedong, Marilyn and others, I take an ordinary person and try and make other people think about themselves reflected in this person, who is also struggling to get by in this day and age. There is an untapped source of wealth in the individual, the unknown everyday heroes we all are in the massive struggle of life.
My work revolves around the notion of living in the urban environment, which is created by people yet seems to have become less and less people-friendly over time. What was created to bring us together and facilitate communication in the first place, has ended making us grow apart and has dehumanized us to some extent. My portraits try to return some degree of humanity, in a very symbolic way, to the urban environment.
How did you feel, both mentally and physically, when you stepped back and declared this project finished?
Well, in actual fact, part of my work is never completed. But ending a session like this one is always both exhausting and replenishing at the same time. What I really aim with my work is for time to carry on the work I started. Everything changes over time, and where most people seem to work against this, I actually try and make this ephemeral nature a part of my pieces - I instigate it, so that's why I never see a piece as being finished. There is always something that will be added (or subtracted) over time, even if it mutates beyond recognition. The decay and change brought on by the elements and other factors are very much a part of it, so in a certain way I'm trying to form a partnership with nature so we can somehow come to work together in the same direction. This is true even in other media, I always try to find a process that will foster this change over time, whether in screen printing or carving walls.
How many wall portraits have you produced to date, and which one do you consider your best?
Always hard to tell... To be honest I'm not really sure how many of these I have carved so far, and I always feel that my favorite is the latest piece. Once it's done I'm usually already focusing on the next one...
Which street artists do you most admire and why?
I started out admiring local graffiti artists from around Lisbon who I used to see when I was growing up, some of them became good friends later on, such as Tape, Clear, Hium, Klit, Ram, Mar, Time and others, all big bombers in those days. Banksy's work was pivotal in my life, for its style and content, but mostly for the attitude and intent it contained and the new directions it inspired in me. There are too many street and other artists whose work I admire to name them all, but some that have made an impression are Gordon Matta-Clark,JR, Obey, Katherina Grosse, Conor Harrington, Word 2 Mother, NeckFace, Faile, Blu, Barry McGee, Os Gêmeos, among many, many others, each of these for different reasons, different styles and concepts.
Check out more Vhils creations on his website.
