VHILS Unearths What Lies Beneath in ‘Latent’
The Portuguese artist brings carved doors, torn billboards, ceramic tiles and architectural debris to Baró Mallorca for his first solo exhibition on the island.
Summary
‘Latent’ marks VHILS’ first solo exhibition in Mallorca and the beginning of his collaboration with Baró.
The show brings together carved doors, torn billboards, ceramic tile works and architectural debris, continuing his focus on memory, material and urban transformation.
Taking its title from a light phenomenon inside Palma Cathedral, the exhibition centers on VHILS’ process of removing surface layers to reveal what was already hidden beneath.
For more than two decades, Alexandre Farto, better known as VHILS, has built a practice around subtraction. Rather than adding images to the surfaces around him, the Portuguese artist cuts, drills, tears and breaks into them, uncovering portraits from the layers of material and history already embedded within.
That process takes center stage in ‘Latent,’ VHILS’ first solo exhibition in Mallorca and the beginning of his collaboration with Baró. Opening during the 2026 edition of Nit de l’Art, the exhibition brings together several ongoing bodies of work across the gallery’s two main spaces.
The exhibition takes its name from an optical phenomenon that occurs inside Palma Cathedral, known locally as La Seu. Twice a year, sunlight passes through the cathedral’s vast rose window and projects its form onto the opposite wall, momentarily producing what appears to be a second rose window. Nothing new is introduced into the space. Instead, the architecture briefly reveals an image that was already contained within it.
The phenomenon closely mirrors VHILS’ approach to making work. Beginning with an existing surface, the artist removes or breaks through its layers until another image emerges. Across ‘Latent,’ abandoned doors are carved into faces, advertising billboards are cut apart until their surfaces resemble archaeological sites and ceramic tiles become the foundation for portraits. Elsewhere, fragments recovered from demolished buildings are transformed into sculptural works that retain traces of their former environments.
Together, the works extend VHILS’ longstanding investigation into the relationship between cities and the people who inhabit them. Materials typically treated as disposable become records of development, displacement and collective memory, with the artist approaching architecture less as a backdrop than as something capable of absorbing human experience.
At its core, ‘Latent’ asks a question that has followed VHILS throughout his practice: what can a surface hold beyond what we initially see? ‘Latent’ opens at Baró Mallorca on September 19, 2026 and will remain on view through March 2027.
Baró Mallorca
Carrer de Can Sanç
13, Centre, 07001 Palma
Illes Balears, Spain
