Alexandre Farto

For his upcoming solo exhibition at Danysz Gallery, Alexandre Farto aka Vhils develops a new body of work through the lens of Non-Places, as defined by anthropologist Marc Augé : spaces of transit that structure everyday life while remaining largely anonymous. Paris is approached here not as a symbolic or historical construct, but as a city experienced through movement, through fragments, passages, and everyday transitions.

The exhibition focuses on subways and trains as contemporary non -places. In Paris, these underground and in -between environments generate a particular intensity, moments suspended between arrival and departure, solitude and proximity, routine and chance encounters. These fleeting intervals, Parisian moments lived in motion, for m the emotional and conceptual core of the project.

For this exhibition, Vhils works directly with the material fabric of the city. Fragments of Parisian billboards, metal struc tures used for political affichage, metro doors, and ceramic tiles are transformed through processes of carving, scratching, and excavation. These surfaces, marked by time, use, and collective passage, become both medium and subject. The gesture is not additive but subtractive: an act of revealing what already exists within the material, exposing layers of urban memory embedded in the city itself.

Through this new body of work, the subway emerges not only as a physical setting but as a condition, one that reflects the rh ythm and density of contemporary urban life. Matter acts as repositories of movement, silence, and human presence, where traces accumulate without ever fully settling into permanence.

A subtle yet significant shift occurs in this exhibition. While Vhils’ practice has long explored how the city shapes individ uals, inscribing its marks onto faces and identities, these new works expand that perspective. As Marc Augé pointed out,“ Any representation of the individual is necessarily a representation of the social bond that is consubstantial with it”. Moving beyond portraiture, he introduces scenes and environments that capture the collective pulse of the city. Here, the relationship is expanded: the city is a living structure continuously shaped by its inhabitants, as a group. Through gestures, trajectories, and shared spaces, each individual contributes to the evolving texture of the urban landscape.

By anchoring the notion of non -places in Parisian transit environments, the exhibition explores how cities are shaped precisely through spaces that resist permanence and remembrance. It invites a pause within environments designed for speed, proposing another way of looking, not through monuments or landmarks, but through the transient moments that quietly define daily life.

“It is in the anonymity of the non-place that the community of human destinies is experienced in solitude.”

—Marc Augé – Non-Places: Introduction to an Anthropology of Supermodernity , Paris, Seuil, 1992