Alÿs’s multifaceted actions and works occupy a unique position within the contemporary art world. Widely known for his distinct and po- etic sensibility towards social and geopolitical issues, the artist has described his practice as, “a sort of discursive argument composed of episodes, metaphors, or parables.” The art- ist’s numerous projects have involved push- ing a melting block of ice through the streets of Mexico City, circumnavigating the globe in order to avoid crossing the border between Mexico and the United States, walking through Copenhagen under the influence of a different drug each day for a week, filming his attempts to penetrate the eye of a tornado, videographing a group of boys unrolling then rewinding a film reel across the hills of Kabul, asking 500 volunteers to move a sand dune on the outskirts of Lima about one inch, and trailing a line of green paint while walking for two days along the 1948 cease-fire line between Israel and Jordan. We will discuss recent projects in Gibraltar, Afghanistan, Ciudad Juarez and St Petersburg.

Born in 1959 in Antwerp, Belgium, Francis Alÿs originally trained as an architect. He moved to Mexico City in 1986, where he continues to live and work, and it was the confrontation with issues of urbanization and social unrest in his country of adoption that inspired his decision to become a visual artist. Since 2004, his work has been represented by David Zwirner, where he had his critically acclaimed solo exhibition, Sometimes Doing Something Poetic Can Become Political and Sometimes Doing Something Political Can Become Poetic , in 2007. Alÿs was recently the subject of a major survey, Francis Alÿs: A Story of Deception , which was on view from 2010 to 2011 at the Tate Modern, London; Wiels Centre dA’ rt Contemporain, Brussels; and The Museum of Modern Art, New York, and MoMA PS1, Long Island City, New York.

Over the past decade, he has had several solo exhibitions at prominent venues, including the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin (2010); The Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago (2008); Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2007); Hirsh- horn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.; Portikus, Frankfurt (both 2006); among others. In 2012, Alÿs’s work was featured in dOCUMENTA (13), where a selection of his new color bar paintings were installed in a former bakery in Kas- sel’s city center and REEL-UNREEL was screened at a satellite venue in Kabul. He has participated in a number of interna- tional group exhibitions, including the São Paulo Biennale (2010, 2004, and 1998); Venice Biennale (2007, 2001, and 1999); Shanghai Biennale (2002); Istanbul Biennial (2001 and 1999); and the Havana Biennial (2000 and 1994).

Work by the artist is found in public collections worldwide, including the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, Japan; The Art Institute of Chicago; Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Musée dA’ rt Moderne Grand-Duc Jean, Luxembourg; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Philadelphia Museum of Art; Pina- kothek der Moderne, Munich; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; and the Tate Gallery, London.

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