photo: SAIKI Taku
Untitled
| Artist | Francis ALŸS |
|---|---|
| Year | 1999 |
| Material/ Technique | oil and encaustic on canvas on wood, newspaper photograph |
| Size/ Duration | canvas: H38 × W46.5cm, newspaper photograph: H19.5 × W14.5cm |
| Copyright Notice | © Francis ALŸS |
| Year of acquisition/ donation | 2002（作品購入年月日：2002/03/31） |
| Description | Born in Antwerp, Belgium in 1959. Lives and works in Mexico City, Mexico. After studying engineering and architecture in Tournai, Belgium and Venice, Italy, Francis Alÿs was dispatched as an architect to Mexico in 1986. He has since made Mexico City his home and the stage for his productions. Taking various approaches – performances, video, photography, painting, and drawing – Alÿs places himself in the urban environment as an active participant and employs the act of ‘walking’ as his medium, method, and theme, and the foundation of his artworks. While responding sensitively to the situations and occurrences of everyday life, he abstracts and collects fragments of the city from an objective perspective. Although solitary in the extreme, his urban interventions are deeply concerned with contemporary social and economic conditions and human existence, and filled with movement, ambiguity, metaphor, and paradox. The narratives Alÿs thus depicts endlessly replay in varying forms in the viewer’s mind, like a parable or a rumor. The figures appearing in the desolate scenery of mountains, seashores, caves, cliffs, and fire include a man lying at full length with an automatic rifle and hovering flies, a man carrying a twisted cane, a girl walking with one foot stuck in a pot, a naked man ascending a shore and a pig, and a fox falling with its body doubled up. In another work, a newspaper clipping of the Zapatista Army of National Liberation accompanies a picture depicting the trunks of trees. These eight works form a portion of the “Déjà Vu” series Alÿs showed in 2001. This series, composed of pairs of works having the same motif, awaken in the viewer a strange sense of déjà vu. Thereafter, many of the works were touched up, repainted, and became a part of his book published in 2003 entitled "The Prophet and the Fly". While each stands on its own, the paintings of Francis Alÿs possess unlimited potential to produce a different visual impression in response to their installation in different contexts. Looking at his figures of people, who float lightly or uncertainly in circumstances from which they are always departing, the viewer is overcome by a sense of déjà vu and returns to everyday reality with senses awakened, as if after an encounter with a phantom. |
NOTES
This Collection Data page contains the works and materials in the collection of 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, as of April 1, 2018.
Artists are listed alphabetically by artist’s surname.
Works and materials by the same artists are listed according to the date of the work in principle.
Works whose dates are unidentified are listed at the end of each item. Some works are not listed according to the date of work due to their relations.
The data of works and materials are listed in order of title, production year, material/technique/form, dimensions, donor’s name, copyright holder and credit for photograph.
Dimensions are given by height (H) x width (W) in centimeters for plane work, and height (H) x width (W) x depth (D) in cm for 3-D work. Diameter (Ø) is used for circular work.
For the name of country or city, the name currently used in English is listed in principle.