ART CITIES:Paris-Francis Alÿs

Born in 1959 in Antwerp, Belgium, Francis 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.

By Efi Michalarou
Photo: David Zwirner Gallery Archive

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. Francis Alÿs in his solo exhibtion “Don’t Cross the Bridge Before You Get to the River” brings together a group of works made by the artist from 2006 onward that relate to an action that took place simultaneously on opposite shores of the Strait of Gibraltar (in Tangier, Morocco, and Tarifa, Spain) on 12 August 2008. Alÿs is known for his in-depth projects in a wide range of media, including documentary film, painting, photography, performance, and video. Through his practice, Alÿs consistently directs his distinct poetic and imaginative sensibility toward anthropological and geopolitical concerns centered around observations of, and engagements with, everyday life. The artist himself has described his work as “a sort of discursive argument composed of episodes, metaphors, or parables”. Since 2004, the artist has shifted his attention to the inherent sociopolitical conflict in border regions, making works in interstitial locales such as the Strait of Gibraltar, Jerusalem, the Turkish-Armenian border, the open water between Havana and Key West, Florida, and the Panama Canal Zone. The two-channel video, “Don’t Cross the Bridge Before You Get to the River” (2008) is key work, the Strait of Gibraltar was a strategic location, and the center of conflict between the great powers. Its width, which is only 13 km, could hypothetically make it possible to connect Africa and Europe with boats, and this idea is coupled with kids’ imaginations and poetic gestures. In this remarkable project a line of kids each carrying a boat made out of a shoe leaves Europe in the direction of Morocco, while a second line of kids with shoe-boats leaves Africa in the direction of Spain. Will the two lines meet on the horizon? “Shoeboat” is an installation piece with 64 pairs of shoes. The boats the kids made out of their shoes replace physical bridges and fishing boats, thereby transforming the kids into giants from fairy tales who walk towards the horizon. This project becomes a fable with kids’ games used to illustrate the belief in the possibility of change. Attempting to bridge not only continents but also cultures, the two lines of giggling children waded into the lapping waves, trying to move toward each other, while the tide relentlessly pulls them back to the shore, in an effort to answer the question posed by Alÿs: “Will the two lines meet in the chimera of the horizon?” “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. In addition to the video documentation, Alÿs created an important group of paintings, drawings, and sculptures. Made on site as well as in the studio, they allow the artist to experiment with similar ideas and themes in a more solitary and introspective way. Throughout his practice, Alÿs has utilized a combination of abstract and realist motifs in his paintings in order to address the inherent difficulty of representing complex concepts directly.

Photo: Francis Alÿs, Painting/Retoque (Video still)k 2008, Video, 8:30 min, color, sound, © Francis Alÿs, Courtesy the artist and David Zwirner Gallery

Info: David Zwirner Gallery, 108 rue Vieille du Temple, Paris, France, Duration: 27/7-17/7/2021, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:00-19:00, www.davidzwirner.com

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Francis Alÿs, Don’t Cross the Bridge Before You Get to the River, Strait of Gibraltar, Morocco-Spain, 2008, Duration: 7:46 min, In collaboration with Rafael Ortega, Julien Devaux, Felix Blume, Ivan Boccara, Abbas Benhim, Fundación Montenmedio Arte and the kids of Tangier and Tarifa., © Francis Alÿs, Courtesy the artist

Francis Alÿs, Reel-Unreel, Kabul, Afghanistan, 2011, Duration: 19:32 min, In collaboration with Julien Devaux and Ajmal Maiwandi, © Francis Alÿs, Courtesy the artist

Francis Alÿs, Watercolor, Trabzon, Turkey-Aqaba, Jordan, 2010, Duration: 1:20 min, © Francis Alÿs, Courtesy the artist

Francis Alÿs, Painting/Retoque, Ex-Panama Canal Zone, Panama, 2008, Duration: 8:31 min, © Francis Alÿs, Courtesy the artist