Art Discovery Contest powered by @awispa

This  challenge aim to broaden our understanding for the diversity of art.

To participate, you need to publish a post about some iconic artist who comes from your country.

You can check the details HERE

For my entry, let me present you Alexandre Manuel Dias Farto aka Vhils :)

image source

Pluralist artist, abrasive and poetic gesture (his words)  

Vhils is a Portuguese painter and graffiti artist born in Lisbon in 1987, known for his  groundbreaking carving technique. He began painting in 1998 at the age of eleven. Painting walls of streets and trains in Lisbon.

Has been exploring new ways in illustration, animation and graphic design, mixing the vectorial style with the freehand drawing, combined with contrasting and dirty shapes that take us back to epic moments.  

In 2011, he developed a technique using explosives, graphite, traces of posters and even portraits made of rusty metal to create portraits and phrases. There are works spread throughout various parts of the world such as the Portuguese cities of Lisbon, Porto and Aveiro, as well as capitals such as London, Moscow, Bogotá, and cities such as Medellín, Cali, Colombia, New York, Los Angeles, Grottaglie from Italy).

Among other things, he wanted to be an inventor - to have ideas and to execute them. What he do is not very different from what he wanted.   

In his work impresses not only his ability with methods and materials, symbolically combining destruction with creation, but his sensitivity, the history of the urban environment and the human lives in the communities where he worked.

If you search for Vhils will find an ample work divided by 9 categories:

Walls, Billboards, Metal, Wood, Paper, Styrofoam, Cork, Other Media and Explosives, yes you read it right, EXPLOSIVES :D and believe me, It is amazing to see, and i mean, all the work, this guy is super creative.

Let me show you some of his work:

WALLS:

BILLBOARD:

STYROFOAM:

CORK:

And when you think you seen it all, this guy do this:

EXPLOSIVES:

The source of the pictures and video used in this post is THE OFFICIAL SITE where you can see his portfolio 

This work is so brilliant that i think i´ll never get sick of it, the way it addresses citizens and cities assumes a universal language and this ability to transform the degraded urban landscape into a space for dialogue about the human condition is amazing.

Vhils words:

"It is interesting to see how art has the power to create a relationship with the human being and, from there, to create dialogue and to focus on situations in which art serves almost as a weapon for these people. Work has spread and has made sense in various places in the world "  

Hope you like the post and the art :)

Cheers :)