Portuguese artist Alexandre Farto (b. 1987) has been interacting visually with the urban environment under the name of Vhils since his days as a prolific graffiti writer in the early-to-mid 2000s.

His groundbreaking bas-relief carving technique – which forms the basis of the Scratching the Surface project and was first presented to the public at the VSP group exhibition in Lisbon in 2007 and at the Cans Festival in London the following year –, has been hailed as one of the most compelling approaches to art created in the streets in the last decade.

Vhils

Portuguese

Since 1999, Patrick McNeil and Patrick Miller have collaborated under the name FAILE (an anagram of “a life”) to create kinetic, image-saturated paintings, prints, sculptures, and installations. Their democratic street style features fragmented mash-ups of comic book and cartoon characters, advertising and propaganda slogans, bright patterns and colors, and historical and pop cultural references. At the beginning of their career, FAILE’s work appeared on the streets as stickers, posters, and stenciled images. Since then, the duo has enjoyed exhibitions at Tate Modern, the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, the Brooklyn Museum, the Central Academy of Fine Art Museum in Beijing, and the Mima Museum in Brussels, among other institutions. FAILE has also produced large-scale murals and staged participatory public interventions in cities including New York, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, and Lyon, France—further blurring the lines between “high” and “low” culture.

Faile

American

Main

Artist

Printer

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Substrata