Rust Belt #07
Alexandre Farto aka Vhils
Galeria Vera Cortês, Lisbon
- Title
- Rust Belt #07
- Gallery
- Galeria Vera Cortês, Lisbon
- Year
- 2021
- Duration
- 2 min 30 s
- Format & Technical
1920x1080, HD 25fps. Color, sound
- Courtesy
GALERIA VERA CORTÊS presents “Rust Belt #7”, by Alexandre Farto aka Vhils. The project was executed in Barreiro, a city on the southern margin of the Tagus river which used to be part of a massive rust-belt area. This place holds a significance for the artist because it is where he was born and raised. The portrait created by the explosion is based on archive pictures of workers from the factory that once stood there and pays homage to them all, but is also a testament to the ephemerality of these enormous and complex industrial infrastructures. There are countless areas like this across the western world: cities that lost their livelihood and adapted to new and harsh realities. Alexandre Farto aka Vhils has symbolically crystallised this in a digital format as a digital industrial era approaches at full speed, in a timeframe and territory where our presence will be progressively less evident.
Stills
Portuguese visual artist Alexandre Farto aka Vhils (b. 1987) has developed a unique visual language. Having begun to interact with the urban environment through the practice of graffiti in the early 2000s, Vhils has been hailed as one of the most innovative artists of his generation. Since 2005, he has presented his work in over 30 countries around the world in solo and group exhibitions, site-specific art interventions, artistic events and projects in various contexts – from working with communities in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro, to collaborations with well-reputed artistic and museological institutions such as the Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati (2020); Le Centquatre-Paris, Paris (2018); CAFA Art Museum, Beijing (2017); Hong Kong Contemporary Art Foundation, Hong Kong (2016); Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2016); EDP Foundation, Lisbon (2014); and the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, San Diego (2010), among others.
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Galeria Vera Cortês
- Address
- Rua João Saraiva Nº 16, 1º, 1700-250, Lisbon, Portugal
- Phone
- T (+351) 213 950 177
- ov@veracortes.com
- Website
- www.veracortes.com
Galeria Vera Cortês was founded by Vera Cortês in 2006, in Lisbon, Portugal. Initially an agency dedicated to the development of specific projects by emerging artists (2003-2006), Vera Cortês decided to expand the program and became a gallery in order to create more opportunities to establish a longstanding and continuous collaboration with each artist. The gallery represents both national and international artists whose work spans across a wide spectrum of disciplines. Committed to organising monographic exhibitions by its represented artists and promoting them on an international scale, the gallery also realizes projects and exhibitions with different curators and other artists to further the creation and exchange of contemporary artistic production.