It's not every day that opportunities to curate a job like the one presented to us this past fall arise. After having some conversations with the Sevillian restaurant El Lobo López, it became clear to us that what we had ahead of us could be a great project: they had proposed to bring urban art to the walls of their restaurant, but it could not be any artist or any work .

The Lobo López restaurant, from the La vida en tapas group, with places as mythical as Dúo Tapas, Nazca, Chifa or Gigante Bar and now Lobo López. It combines a careful exotic decoration and the essence of the Sevillian patio. A scenography (worked on by the CM4 architecture studio) that extends through its three rooms and that adapts perfectly to its innovative proposal, a fusion of Mediterranean gastronomy and tropical culinary tradition.

The proposal was irresistible: the Portuguese artist Alexandre Farto, better known as Vhils. His work is between sculpture and painting, with a conceptual background that deals with the restitution of the abandoned, the despised, bringing life to the inert.

Vhils (1987), grew up with the graffiti culture of Lisbon and highly influenced by that of Barcelona. He was rejected at the Faculdade de Belas Artes in Lisbon which led him to the school in Berlin, where he began his academic training. After completing his training at the Byam Shaw School of Art in London, in 2007 during the Cans Festival, one of his works appears alongside another by the British artist Banksy. This will make him appear on the cover of The Times and in countless media, which is a turning point in his artistic career. His works begin to be seen in different countries around the world and Vhils is described as one of the best international urban artists by CNN. Among his multidisciplinary works, it is also worth noting the direction of the video clip "Raised by Wolves" (carried out in 2014). He currently works from Lisbon and Hong Kong (where he produces and manages his work around the world) and is represented in China, Portugal, Italy, Germany, the UK and France.

We cannot deny it, bringing an artist of the level of Vhils to Seville and organizing this project was not an easy matter, the process had to be carried out without any problem and we were obliged to be up to the task. Vhils' future work in Seville would be the only one in the Seville city and one of the few in all of Spain. Thanks to the professionalism of the direction of Lobo López and Vhils and his team, all the work of curating and organizing was much more fluid and simple.

Weeks passed and the day came when the urban artist would intervene on one of the walls of Lobo López. The design of the artistic work could not be known until a few minutes before the start of the work, which brought a certain aura of mystery to the whole process. Before starting the intervention itself, we expected some preparation of the wall, but to our surprise, the artist kept the essence of the support itself.

We observed how, with the help of hammers and chisels, the artist gives shape to the work. His way of working kept us hypnotized, attentive to the process, to each movement carried out by the artist and his team. After many hours of uninterrupted intervention, the work ends and from what was previously a wall, a simple wall, the artistic essence of Vhils emerges.

Now, in the Lobo López restaurant, no one can avoid the severe feminine look or the almost irreverent gesture that flows from the wall, with the attitude that grants permanence in the face of the transience of diners in the restaurant.

Even so, everything you can see or read is not enough to describe this experience, so we recommend that you visit Lobo López to try its fusion cuisine and observe the work of Vhils.

We can only thank the management of Lobo López and Vhils that this work has been carried out and that we have been able to curate it.


https://www.diartgallery.com/alexandre-farto-aka-vhils/