Portuguese artist Alexandre Farto, known professionally as VHILS, has spent more than 20 years finding images by removing material. Walls, doors, tiles, and other discarded surfaces become starting points for portraits, with the artist carving, cutting, and breaking through their layers rather than building an image on top of them.
That process is the focus of “Latent,” VHILS’s first solo exhibition in Mallorca and his debut presentation with Baró. The show opens as part of the 2026 edition of Nit de l’Art and brings together several strands of the artist’s practice across Baró Mallorca’s two main exhibition spaces.
An Exhibition Named After Light
The title Latent comes from an unusual event that takes place inside Palma Cathedral, or La Seu.
Twice each year, sunlight enters through the cathedral’s large rose window and casts its shape onto the wall opposite. For a short period, the projection creates the illusion of another rose window inside the building.
The effect is simple but closely connected to VHILS’ way of working. The artist does not need to introduce a new surface or image. Instead, he exposes something hidden within an existing one.
That idea runs throughout the Mallorca exhibition.
Finding Portraits in What Is Left Behind
Across Latent, old doors are carved and transformed into faces, while discarded advertising billboards are stripped back until their surfaces resemble archaeological remains.
Ceramic tiles become another canvas for portraits. Elsewhere, salvaged material from demolished buildings is reworked into sculptures, retaining marks and fragments that point back to the places where they once belonged.
The materials may appear ordinary or even disposable, but VHILS treats them as carriers of memory. Scratches, layers, damage and remnants of previous use all become part of the finished work.
Cities as Records
The exhibition continues VHILS’ broader interest in the relationship between urban environments and the people who live in them.
Rather than seeing architecture simply as a setting, he approaches the built environment as something that can record what happens around it. A demolished wall, an old door or an outdated billboard can preserve traces of changing neighbourhoods, movement and the people who have passed through them.
This gives the works in Latent a connection to both physical and collective memory. What appears to be a worn-out surface can contain a much longer story beneath it.
At the centre of the exhibition is a question that has remained important to VHILS’ practice: how much can an existing surface reveal when its outer layers are removed?
“Latent” opens at Baró Mallorca on September 19, 2026, and remains on view through March 2027.
Baró Mallorca
Carrer de Can Sanç, 13
Centre, 07001 Palma
Illes Balears, Spain
