Untitled (series)
2006 - Drawing & Print (Drawing & Print)
Francis Alÿs
This series of small drawings is executed with varying materials—pen, ink, colored pencil, charcoal, and masking tape—on architect’s tracing paper. Alÿs often executes such sketches in preparation for his performances, videos, and larger two-dimensional bodies of work. As the first visual representations of his ideas, they capture his thinking processes at the raw conceptual stage and allow us to gain a deeper understanding of his larger works.
Trained as an architect, Alÿs turned to a visual arts based practice in the early 1990s as a more immediate, direct, and effective way of exploring issues related to urbanization, to the ordering and signification of urban space and to the semiotics of its use. His work initiates with a simple action, either by him or others, which is then documented in a range of media. Alÿs explores subjects such as modernizing programs in Latin America and border zones in areas of conflict, often asking about the relevance of poetic acts in politicized situations. Documentation is central to his practice as well as painting, drawing, and video. In his work, When Faith Moves Mountains (2002) made in collaboration with Mexican critic Cuauhtemoc Medina, Alÿs recruited 500 volunteers outside of Lima, Peru. Each person moved a shovel full of sand one step at a time form one side of a dune to the other, and together they moved the entire geographical location of the dune by a few inches. Critic Jean Fisher linked Alÿs’ work to the radical event of precipitating a crisis of meaning, where the exposure of a void of meaning is confronted by its social situation, leading up to some kind of truth. Francis Alÿs was born in Belgium in 1959. He lives and works in Mexico City.
Colors:
Related works of genres: » conceptual art, » mexican contemporary artists, » contemporary artist, » conceptual artist, » born 1959
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John Baldessari
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Félix González-Torres
1992Behind the simplicity and beauty of this untitled photograph of a brilliantly-colored flowerbed by Félix González-Torres are two remarkable stories of love, loss, and resilience...
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Allan McCollum
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Vincent Leong
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Félix González-Torres
1992Behind the simplicity and beauty of this untitled photograph of a brilliantly-colored flowerbed by Félix González-Torres are two remarkable stories of love, loss, and resilience...
© » KADIST
Allan McCollum
1982In the work titled The Glossies (1980), an affinity for photography manifested itself before McCollum actually began to use photography as a medium...
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Minerva Cuevas
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Mario Garcia Torres
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Francis Alÿs
2004The Nightwatch , which is an ironic reference to the celebrated painting by Rembrandt, follows the course of a fox wandering among the celebrated collections of the National Portrait Gallery in London...
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Gabriel Orozco
1992Gabriel Orozco often documents found situations in the natural or urban landscape...
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Rivane Neuenschwander
2007Mapa-Mundi BR (postal) is a set of wooden shelves holding postcards that depict locations in Brazil named for foreign countries and cities...
