The Paradox of Praxis Step By Step: Approaching Francis
Alys
Francis Alys is one of the stars of the young
international scene. The Belgian artist, who lives in Mexico, doesn’t
create massive sculptures for eternity, but mobile and sometimes absurd
art that essentially takes place in the mind and at the moment it is being
made – entirely in the tradition of the Situationists and the Fluxus
movement. Currently, two large exhibitions documenting his work can be
seen in the Wolfsburg Art Museum and at Martin Gropius Bau in Berlin.
Alys’ works are also part of the Deutsche Bank Collection. Katrin
Wittneven on Alys’ impressive images and actions.
Francis Alys, 2004
©Photo: Mike
Wolff/ Der Tagesspiegel, 2004, All Rights Reserved
On the way to
Francis Alys: the train speeds along from Berlin to Wolfsburg at 160 miles
per hour. The trip takes less than an hour; on foot, the journey would
last several days, and the traveler would see a lot more of the landscape,
people, and transitions between larger and smaller cities, villages, and
bare land than the computer screen image out there beyond the train
window. Notions on walking accompany the visitor as he progresses through
Francis Alys’ first German retrospective in the
Wolfsburg Kunsmuseum, titled
Walking Distance from the Studio – not only because Alys built
constructions into the otherwise horizontal exhibition spaces, leading the
viewer up and down stairs in roughly made cabinets, but also because the
theme of walking carries like a red thread throughout the works of the
1959-born Belgian artist. Alys, who lives in Mexico City, walks, or rather
undertakes paseos, somewhat more sonorous than mere walks. Sometimes he
carries a can with paint running out in a fine line that marks the path
he’s taken, sometimes his sweater unravels step by step, like in
Fairy Tales (1994). For the exhibition NowHere from 1996, he
walked for a week through Copenhagen, ingesting a different drug each day.
A year later, he took one of the large blocks of ice street vendors use to
cool their drinks and pushed it through the streets of his native city.
The rapidly melting ice left an evaporating trail of water, and after a
few hours, the artist was kicking a small ice cube along; finally, there
was nothing more than a trickling puddle in the street. All that remains
of the work is the documentary film titled Paradox of Praxis and,
additionally, Sometimes when I do something it leads to nothing.
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Fairy Tales, 1994 coloured photography
©The artist
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Aimlessness is a recurrent characteristic of these works,
which appear as counter-models to our eminently efficient world. The
Berlin
exhibition is taking place parallel to the Wolfsburg exhibition on the
occasion of the77,000-Euro
Blue Orange Prize, which has been awarded for the first time this
year; here, visitors are met with a red VW Bug struggling up a hill again
and again. A band rehearsal can be heard on a loudspeaker as
accompaniment. Each time the car rolls up the hill and almost reaches the
top in Alys videoinstallation The Rehearsal (1999-2004), the music
stops and the car rolls back down. Or is it the other way around? Does the
music stop because the motor isn’t powerful enough to climb the hill, as
with so many of the dilapidated cars driving around the streets of Mexico?
In his perfectly choreographed actions, Alys allows for both perspectives.
Drawings, sketches, and models provide information on the making of the
film installation, demonstrating that there’s a precise planner at work
here who nonetheless accords chance and uncertainty an equal voice in his
work.
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Video Still from
"The Rehearsal"
(1999-2004)
©The artist
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The Rehearsal, Installation view,
Martin-Gropius-Bau exhibition,
Berlin, 2004
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This unpretentious, almost random quality is also reflected
in the presentation of his works: in Wolfsburg, canvases lean against the
wall or lie on the floor. In Berlin, it was said at the opening in Martin
Gropius Bau that only a single installation was originally planned. But
then the artist had enough material in his luggage alone to fill several
rooms: with video projections and the small, waxy-looking paintings that
are echoed throughout the exhibition like déjà vus. Alys doesn’t create
massive sculptures for eternity, but mobile and sometimes absurd art that
essentially takes place in the mind and at the moment it is being made –
entirely in the tradition of the Situationists and the Fluxus movement.
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l'adoration des images, 2001
Deutsche Bank Collection
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Study for la Bataille du Bien & du
Mal, 2001
Deutsche Bank Collection
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