Francis Alÿs

The Belgian born artist strikes again with a though provoking mixture of his most praised work. Francis Tate Moderns much anticipated Francis Alÿs exhibition has been the most talked about show in London. His mixed media works is though provoking and easy to comprehend in regards to his 

work being influenced by similar themes. What seems to hold the interest of all like-minded tourist and regular Tate visitors is the heavy emphasis on migration and border control issues. the first piece that was arresting  to my eye and many viewers is the small but  conveniently placed small canvas torn in the middle cutting through the canvas and merged into the wall seems like an earthquake crack imprinted on a canvas, which may subsequently be the intention of Alÿs great  interest in geography as an architect himself his enthusiasm for architecture is seen throughout his work.

Walking through the spacious monotonous a picture motion loop is running, it’s a murky view of road in what looks like a border crossing perhaps the Mexico-USA border. This types of images of border politics is the theme surrounding most of Alÿs works. ‘The Loop’ is a simple idealist view of an ocean that is the crossing from the South American city Tijuana with the departure date being June 2, Alÿs leaves a trail of the cities he stops for to make his journey to San Diego within 35 days trip around the countries reside on border of the Pacific ocean, this countries were Tijuana to San Diego via Mexico City, Panama City, Santiago, Tahiti, Auckland, Sydney, Singapore, Bangkok, Rangoon, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Seoul, Anchorage, Vancouver, and Los Angeles. “7% of the total travelling time has been spent in 17 airports over 16 countries. ” (A. Francis).

Another outstanding work is ‘The Green Line’ Alÿs discovery of his signature style ‘the leak’ which is performed by dripping paint from a bottle to mark a line for an artistic purpose. The Green Line is significant historical divide of the Israel-Jordan  border after the 6 days war in 1967 which ended with a cease fire and subsequently the dividing line which was marked in green grease pencil, the area is now know as the  West bank. Alÿs reflects on this walking silently through the border with dripping green paint from a bottle. “Sometimes doing something poetic can become political, and sometimes doing something political can become poetics”

this is written before the entrance to the motion picture of Alÿs Green Line.

 Beyond all this there is also great piece such as the ‘Re-enactments’ that shows a re-enactment of Alÿs witness 

of a random day in Mexico city in where he had seen a man buy a gun from a gun shop and walked openly through the street until he is stopped by the police. Alÿs re-enactment of this scene took him 12mins until he is eventually stopped by the policy. Other pieces include small picture motion and scene of the ‘rehearsal’, with the caption ‘Modernity is pornography’ a strong statement that can be arguable.  ‘When faith moves’ is an emotional piece where the artist gathers 500 Peruvian students to voluntarily walk up in line up a san dune on the outskirts of the city, digging while walking and displacing the sand dune by a few centimetres. Again the artist touches a bit of politics with the principle of ‘maximum effort, minimal result’ 

a phrase used by many Latin American on the modernisation scheme. On the video some of the voluntaries are interviewed one voluntary says ‘when we started getting to the end, everyone started shovelling faster’ as most of Alÿs video motions touch on certain topics, this particular piece triggers the issue of  immigration and border crossing in South America.