Time Active
Artist Statement
Francis Alÿs (born 1959, Antwerp) is a Belgian-born, Mexico-based artist.
His work emerges in the interdisciplinary space of art, architecture, and social practice.
He has created a diverse body of artwork and performance art that explores urban tensions and geopolitics. Employing a broad range of media from painting to performance, his works examine the tension between politics and poetics, individual action and impotence. Alÿs commonly enacts paseos—walks that resist the subjection of common space. Cyclical repetition and mechanics of progression and regression also inform the character of Alÿs’ actions and mythology—Alÿs contrasts geological and technological time through land-based and social practice that examine individual memory and collective mythology. Alÿs frequently engages rumor as a central tool in his practice, disseminating ephemeral, practice-based works through word-of-mouth and storytelling. [Wikipedia]
bio
Born in 1959 in Antwerp, Belgium, Alÿs originally trained as an architect. He moved to Mexico City in 1986, where he continues to live and work, and it was the confrontation with issues of urbanization and social unrest in his new country of adoption that inspired his decision to become a visual artist. Since 2004, the artist’s work has been represented by David Zwirner, where he has had two solo exhibitions at the gallery in New York in 2007 and 2013. In 2016, Ciudad Juárez projects marked his first solo presentation at David Zwirner, London and, in 2021, the solo exhibition Don't Cross the Bridge Before You Get to the River was on view at the gallery's Paris location.
In 2022, Alÿs will represent Belgium at the Venice Biennale. In 2021, the Musée cantonal des Beaux-Arts, Lausanne, Switzerland will present Francis Alÿs: As Long As I'm Walking. Also in 2021, Francis Alÿs: Salam Tristesse was on view at Fragmentos, Espacio de Arte y Memoria, Bogotá, Colombia. In 2019 to 2020, solo shows were on view at the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, as part of the 16th edition of the MOMENTA | Biennale de l’image, and the Eye Filmmuseum in Amsterdam. [David Zwirner]
exhibition
khkdjkjsgd
Latest/Featured work
Francis Alÿs - Sometimes Making Something Leads to Nothing, 1997 (HD & full version)
In 'Sometimes Making Something Leads to Nothing', 1997, Francis Alÿs pushed a block of ice through the streets of Mexico City until it completely melted. After nice hours the block was reduced to no more than an ice cube suitable for a whisky on the rocks, so small that he could casually kick it along the street. Credit: www.francisalys.com More about Francis Alÿs at https://publicdelivery.org/tag/francis-aly%CC%88s/
keywords
Francis Alÿs Reel-Unreel
Kabul, Afghanistan, 2011; 19:32 min...
Francis Alÿs Fitzroy Square
London, UK, 2004; 7:00 min...
Francis Alÿs – The Last Clown...
Belgian artist Francis Alÿs talks...
Francis Alÿs – Sometimes Making Something...
In 'Sometimes Making Something Leads...
