BOOK:Francis Alÿs-Revised & Expanded Edition, Phaidon Publications

Francis Alÿs examines the patterns of various urban sites before weaving his own fables into their tangled social fabric with wit, sensitivity, and an acutely personal connection to his subject matter. A scene such as a Volkswagen Beetle struggling up a hill or a man pushing a block of ice can carry a message that resonates far beyond the work’s simple parameters. As Alÿs puts it, “Sometimes doing something poetic can become political, and sometimes doing something political can become poetic”. The book “Francis Alÿs: Revised & Expanded Edition” by Phaidon Publications is a fully updated and expanded edition of the artist’s first comprehensive monograph, more than a decade since its original publication. Combining humour, sensitivity and an extremely personal connection to the people and places where he works, Francis Alys often employs the basic human activity of walking to create performances, photo documentation, videos, slide projections and paintings. The artist first came to international attention with a performance work called “Narcotourism” (‘NowHere’, Lousiana Museum, 1996) in which he walked the city of Copenhagen over the course of seven days, each day under the influence of a different drug. Alys here underlined the wholly personal experience of artmaking, as well as the hyperreal and unnatural experience of contemporary tourism, reducing his travels to completely interiorized, personal ‘trips’. A very independent artist belonging to no particular group, Alys’ is a unique and truly international voice in today’s global art world.-EfiMichalarou