Francis Alÿs__Relato de una_negociación

Event Details

This event finished on 15 February 2016

Categories: Exhibitions
Tags: Plantilla histórica

06.11.2015—_15.02.2016
Curador: Cuauhtemoc Medina
Inauguración: jueves 5 de noviembre

La muestra presenta un conjunto de proyectos recientes del artista belga-mexicano Francis Alÿs (Amberes, 1959). Se trata de la exposición individual más extensa que se haya realizado de Alÿs en nuestro país e incluye tres de sus más importantes trabajos fílmicos de la última década que tratan sobre migraciones, política global, lo urbano y procesos sociales que profundizan en la reflexión crítica de la sociedad contemporánea: su persecución de remolinos de tierra en el sur de la ciudad de México (Tornado, 2000-2010), su intervención del cruce de la frontera entre África y Europa en el estrecho de Gibraltar (No cruzarás el puente antes de llegar al río, 2008) y el film que alude a la imagen real-irreal de Afganistán que transmiten los medios en Occidente (REEL-UNREEL, 2011, perteneciente a la serie Afganistán, 2011-2014). Cada una de estas obras es presentada junto a otras piezas de Alÿs que contribuyen a ponerlas en contexto y completan su sentido.

Throughout his career, Francis Alÿs has done highly original work involving collaborative projects with a social orientation. His early paintings explored forms of collaboration and circuits of economic and cultural exchange. These images would later play a crucial role in the development of the metaphorical, mythical and social contents and implications of the artist’s actions.

Una historia de negociación will show three of the artist’s most recent projects: Tornado (2000–2010), Don’t cross the bridge before you get to the river (2008), and Reel – Unreel (2011).

La muestra, realizada en colaboración con el Museo Tamayo Arte Contemporáneo de la ciudad de México, continuará su itinerario en el Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes de La Habana, Cuba, en la Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) en Toronto, Canadá y posteriormente en LACMA, Los Ángeles, Estados Unidos.

Francis Alÿs

Antwerp, Belgium, 1959

Francis Alÿs studied architecture at the Institut SupeÅLrieur d'Architecture Saint-Luc in Tournai, Belgium and then at the Istituto Universitario di Architettura in Venice, Italy. He moved to Mexico in 1986 and, in the early nineties, began making work that revolved around documenting in slides, videos, postcards, and performatic interventions his daily experiences walking down the streets of Mexico City.

In relation to Latin American development policies, Alÿs’s works can be understood as episodes in a long and—in the case of iconic works like Cuando la Fe Mueve Montañas [When Faith Moves Mountains]—sometimes epic narrative. More often, though, his interventions are modest in scale. In The Green Line (Jerusalem, 2004), for instance, he drizzled a line of green paint while walking for two days along the ceasefire boundary drawn between Israel and Jordan in 1948. In their apparent futility, these projects persistently point to the creative potential of failure, revealing how the absurd can become poetic when used as a means to make way for transgression.

Solo exhibitions of his work have been held at the Museo de Arte Moderno, Mexico City (1997), the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid (2003), Artangel, London (2005), Antiguo Colegio de San Ildefonso, Mexico City (2006), UCLA Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2007), Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, Germany (2004), the Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois (2008), and other venues. In 2010 and 2011 Francis Alÿs: A Story of Deception—a major retrospective of the artist’s work—was held at the Tate Modern in London, the WIELS Centre d'Art Contemporain in Brussels, and the Museum of Modern Art in New York. AlyÅNs lives and works in Mexico City.

Francis Alÿs and MALBA

MALBA held Francis Alÿs' first exhibition in Argentina in 2006: Patagonia 2004–2006. A Story of Deception, an unprecedented project for MALBA as it was the first artistic production financed by the museum. MALBA and Alÿs worked together on the project for three years, and the work commissioned from the artist has been part of the collection ever since. Patagonia 2004–2006. A Story of Deception is the filming of a mirage on a Patagonian road, which serves as a metaphor for the unattainable, for something that vanishes forever. The work arose from a story that fascinated the artist during his geographical and historical research on the country: the hunting of the rhea by the Tehuelche Indians, which consisted of pursuing the animal on foot for hundreds of kilometers until it was exhausted. On the occasion of the exhibition, MALBA published a bilingual Spanish-English catalog with essays by Olivier Debroise, Francis Alÿs, and Marcelo Pacheco, as well as a complete biography of the artist.

Previously, in 2004, the museum had exhibited the video recording of his work When Faith Moves Mountains (2002), as part of the exhibition The Uses of Image: Photography, Film, and Video in the Jumex Collection.

The Cut (1993-2015)

Acción, óleo sobre tela y video. Colección del artista.

En una demostración de la relación entre acción y pintura, Alÿs ha intervenido la Colección MALBA con este cuadro cortado a la mitad. El cuadro original comentaba el imaginario tropical de América que produjeron los artistas viajeros europeos, y a la vez la acción evoca el ataque a la superficie pictórica de Lucio Fontana. Esta obra es parte de la muestra Francis Alÿs. Relato de una Negociación y puede verse en la sala de la colección permanente del museo.

Catalogue

En MALBA Tienda se puede conseguir el catálogo especial de la exposición de 240 páginas editado por el Museo Tamayo Arte Contemporáneo con la colaboración de MALBA, Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes (La Habana) y la Art Gallery of Ontario (Toronto). El catálogo incluye los ensayos: “Un arte Enjambre“ y “Tolvanera-primavera” de Cuauhtémoc Medina, “Política, juego y arte. La documentación de Afganistán” de Michael Taussig y los textos “La Película”, “Las Pinturas”, Bitácora de Gibraltar (2005-2009), “Preludio al Tornado”, “Correo” y “A veces, hacer bien sale mal, y a veces, hacer mal resulta bien” del artista Francis Alÿs.