GRAPHIUM

To commemorate the inscription of the Petroglyphs along the Bangucheon Stream as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, the Ulsan Art Museum, in collaboration with POMONA, presents GRAPHIUM. This exhibition sheds light on the past and present of the city through the work of Portuguese contemporary artist VHILS (Alexandre Farto). Ulsan is a city where life has been inscribed into stone and metal—from prehistoric petroglyphs dating back some 7,000 years to the traces of twentieth-century industrialization. This landscape resonates deeply with VHILS’s artistic practice, which has long engaged with the act of leaving marks on urban surfaces.

GRAPHIUM revolves around themes of memory, resistance, and identity, spanning from billboard carvings to wall works in cities across the globe, to video and installation pieces, and culminating in the large-scale mural completed on the exterior of the Ulsan Culture & Arts Center in 2024. The figures depicted in his works are fictional—imagined inhabitants who might have lived through Ulsan’s past and present—whose voices weave the city’s time and stories into a single narrative.

The Petroglyphs along the Bangucheon Stream are records of life carved into rock thousands of years ago and can be seen as an ancient form of artistic expression that connects to the graffiti of today’s urban spaces. Though separated by millennia, both are acts of leaving a mark, of recalling, and of revealing oneself. VHILS carries this spirit forward with contemporary tools and materials, inscribing the faces of the forgotten, local heritage, and erased histories onto the city’s surfaces.

Beginning with stone and returning to stone, this exhibition condenses the cycles of human history—construction, destruction, and regeneration—into a singular visual journey. Through Ulsan’s ancient memories and the traces of today’s city, visitors are invited to encounter the moments where past and present converge, and the human marks etched within them.