ART-PRESENTATION: Francis Alÿs-A Story of Negotiation
One of the most compelling artists working today, Francis Alÿs offers a thought-provoking point of view on the times in which we live, raising issues and articulating approaches that allow us to engage our world with new perspectives. Creating work that is equal poetic, political, beautiful and absurd, Francis Alÿs engages directly with urgent social issues, from the war in Afghanistan to border politics around the world.
By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Art Gallery of Ontario Archive
The exhibition “A Story of Negotiation” at Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto, is a sort of retrospective on Francis Alÿs’ most significant projects of the last 20 years and represents the embodiment of one of the characteristic elements of his work, the process of negotiation within the actions he performs. At the centre of this exhibition are three films: “Tornado” (2000-2010), “Don’t Cross the Bridge Before You Get to the River” (2008), and “REEL-UNREEL” (2011-2014). Each of these large-scale video works is amplified by a selection of Alÿs’ paintings and drawings. Numbering 100, these intimately-scaled panels form a bridge across his practice, exploring the tension between politics and poetics and connecting his performative actions with his love of the handmade. “Don’t Cross the Bridge Before You Get to the River” is the conclusion of a series of works that started in 2005 with the project “Bridge”, where Alÿs devised a bridge made of boats, going from Havana to Key West, in order to unite symbolically the opposite shores of Cuba and the USA. This semi-clandestine action was followed in 2008 by “Gibraltar”, a mythological bridge made by children entering the sea, linking the shores of Morocco and Spain across the Strait of Gibraltar, where one of the most significant migratory and smuggling flows of the world is concentrated. Fascinated by the whirlwinds that form after the maize harvest in Milpa Alta, in southern Mexico City, Alÿs set out to document these meteorological phenomena, wanting to register the eye of the storm. “Tornado” transformed progressively into a meditation on the social crisis of Mexico, weighed down by the inequality and violence consequential of the failed neoliberal project. Once the so-called “war on drugs”, generated mountains of corpses numbering over a hundred thousand, chasing tornados became a private act of exorcism. “REEL-UNREEL” is the result of series of visits that Francis Alÿs made to Afghanistan between 2011 and 2014 when the country was occupied by American and European powers trying to contain the Taliban insurrection. In a context in which the dogmatic interpretation of the prohibition of images among the Taliban led to the destruction of an undetermined number of artworks, images, historical objects and filmed material, the artist approached the local history by filming children playing with film reels, rolling them through the streets of Kabul. In parallel, the artist made a series of remarkable paintings that subvert the traditional division between abstraction and figuration.
Info: Curators: Cuauhtémoc Medina Kitty Scott and Morton Rapp, Art Gallery of Ontario, 317 Dundas Street West, Toronto, Ontario, Duration: 8/12/16-2/4/17, Days & Hours: Tue & Thu 10:30-17:00, Wed & Fri 10:30-21:00, Sat-Sun 10:30-17:30, www.ago.net
