Saturday 28 August 2010

Francis Alys - A story of deception



desert eats jungle
jungle eats sea
sea eats desert
desert eats man
man eats jungle
jungle eats desert

from a piece of paper at Francis Alys' show at the Tate. The gallery attendant wouldn't let me photograph a A4 piece of paper but allowed me to copy what it said on my mobile.


A story of deception :
magic / absurdity / poetic / political / loop / unfinished / never-ending / infinite / never-changing / ever-changing

Simple gestures that generate different readings.
A fascination with human labour. People carrying carts/boxes/shop-bikes/plants.

Le temps du sommeil :
Series of small oil-paintings. Echoes of the performances, gestures.

The paintings in the series Le Temps du sommeil were begun in 1996 and often worked at night. They feature visionary dreamlike scenes involving tiny suited men and women acting out strange rituals reminiscent of children's games and gymnastic experiments. Many of these images anticipate and recall the forms he has employed in his actions, but the paintings connect to his actions in other ways too since their surfaces are worked and re-worked. Like the actions, they are perpetually unfinished, and their interpretations unfold over time without resolution.
from the booklet