Francis Alÿs, Don't cross the bridge before you get to the river (2009)
vista da exposição Fabíola, de Francis Alÿs - Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo, 2013
Francis Alÿs at the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo
Francis Alÿs, a Belgian-born artist based in Mexico City since 1986, will have his first-ever solo show in Japan – Gibraltar Focus – opening on 6.29, as the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo hosts his largest piece of work in the past few years.
The show’s centerpiece is Don't cross the bridge before you get to the river, an action in which Alÿs invited Moroccan and Spanish children, separated by the Strait of Gibraltar, to forge ahead toward one another in the ocean while carrying toy boats (made from flip-flop sandals) and creating an imaginary bridge between the continents. “The Strait seemed like the ideal setting to illustrate the contradiction of our times: how do we go about promoting a global economy while limiting the global flow of people between continents?” Alÿs queries. In a film documenting the action, approximately one hundred paintings and drawings, installations, photographs, sculptures, and texts, the artist combines reality and fiction in the style he has developed over the last few years.
Service:
Francis Alÿs: Gibraltar Focus
Curadoria: Kazuhiko Yoshizaki
6.29 to 9.8
Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo
Tokyo, Japan
www.mot-art-museum.jp
Audiences in São Paulo can still check out the show Francis Alÿs’ solo show Fabíola at the State Art Gallery, featuring four hundred images of Saint Fabiola, based on the portrait by artist Frances Jean-Jacques Henner. Found by Alÿs at popular markets, antique shops, and private collections across Europe and the Americas, the portraits that comprise the show problematize issues such as authorship, iconography, originality, and collectionism.
Service:
Fabíola
4.4 to 7.7
Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo
http://www.pinacoteca.org.br
See also: Caderno Sesc_Videobrasil 8: Belong, featuring texts by Cao Guimarães, Christian Pierre Kasper, Emily Jacir, Francis Alÿs, Jimmie Durham, Laymert Garcia dos Santos, Paula Trope, Paulo Nazareth, Regina Parra. Curated by Moacir dos Anjos.