Francis Alÿs

Francis Alÿs is a Belgian-born, Mexico-based artist. His work emerges in the interdisciplinary space of art, architecture, and social practice. After leaving behind his formal training as an architect and relocated to Mexico City, he has created a diverse body of artwork that explores urbanity, spatial justice, and land-based poetics. Employing a broad range of media from painting to performance, his works examine the tension between politics and poetics, individual action and impotence. Alÿs commonly enacts paseos—walks that resist the subjection of common space. Alys reconfigures time to the speed of a stroll, making reference to the figure of the flâneur, originating from the work of Charles Baudelaire and developed by Walter Benjamin. Cyclical repetition and return also inform the character of Alÿs’ movements and mythology—Alÿs contrasts geological and technological time through land-based and social practice that examine individual memory and collective mythology. Alÿs frequently engages rumor as a central theme in his practice, disseminating ephemeral, practice-based works through word-of-mouth and storytelling.

Alÿs' work encompasses many media often involving the participation and presence of the artist. These performed events are documented in video, photographs, writing, painting, and animation. In an interview with sociologist, Sarah Thornton, Alÿs, metaphorized his artistic role as a "midwife." Elaborating he said, "I am not an inventor. I'm just the one on the side."

Alÿs' work has been shown in many international institutions, including Wiels (2010–2011), Tate Modern, London (2010), The AiM Biennale (Arts in Marrakech International Biennale), The Renaissance Society, Chicago (2008), the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2007), Portikus, Frankfurt, Germany, MALBA, Buenos Aires, Argentina, MALi, Lima; Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg (de), Wolfsburg; Musée d'Art Contemporain, Avignon, France (2004); Centro nazionale per le arti contemporanee, Rome, Italy [traveled to Kunsthaus Zürich, Zürich, and Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid] (all 2003); and Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY (2002, 2011[28]); and Or Gallery, Vancouver, Canada (1998). His traveling show of portraits of the Saint Fabiola has traveled to London, New York,Perú and LAMCA. Alÿs participated in the Venice Biennial in 1999, 2001 and 2007, and the Carnegie International in 2004. He was part of the Revolution vs Revolution exhibition that took place at the Beirut Art Center in 2012.

Alÿs is represented by David Zwirner in New York and Galerie Peter Kilchmann in Zurich.
http://hisour.com/artist/francis-alys/