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:
Other related works, blended automatically
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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
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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Yee I-Lann
2013Sarcastically titled to call attention to the problematic notions underlying colonialism, this photograph shows hundreds of Native Malaysians seated quietly behind one of their colonial oppressors...
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Vincent Leong
2012The photograph Exquisite Eco Living is part of a larger series titled Executive Properties in which he digitally manipulated the images to insert iconic buildings of Kuala Lumpur in the view of derelict spaces also found in the city...
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Jennifer Bornstein
1994Collectors’ Favorites is an episode of local cable program from the mid-1990s in which ordinary people were invited to present their personal collections—a concept that in many ways anticipates current reality TV shows and internet videos...
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Du Zhenjun
2010The Tower of Babel is an installation of large-format photographs that forces the audience to occupy a central position through its monumental scale...
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Douglas Gordon
2002Blind Spencer is part of the series “Blind Stars” including hundreds of works in which the artist cut out the eyes of Hollywood stars, in a symbolically violent manner...
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Mungo Thomson
2014Starting with Bruce Nauman’s iconic artwork, The True Artist Helps the World by Revealing Mystic Truths (Window or Wall Sign) , Mungo Thomson’s neon sign is one of a series that replaces Nauman’s quixotic mini-manifesto with aphorisms from ‘recovery’ culture, especially those made popular by alcoholics anonymous...
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Cinthia Marcelle
2012Cinthia Marcelle’s video work Automóvel (2012) re-edits the mundane rhythms of automotive traffic into a highly compelling and seemingly choreographed meditation on sequence, motion, and time...
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Yang Zhenzhong
2012Peasant Sensation Passing Through Flesh – 3 consists of a massage chair fixed to a wall...
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John Baldessari
1997In One Must , an image of a pair of scissors, accompanied by the words of work’s title, poses an ominous question about the relationship between the image and the text...
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Lucas Blalock
2013Blalock resists the immediacy that we have come to expect from photography—that each photograph should communicate its message without delay...
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Heman Chong
2009With a habit of reading eight to ten books at the same time, Chong paints his two-foot tall novel covers through referencing an extensive reading list (accessible on Facebook) he has kept since 2006...