Francis Alys - I thought this man was ingenious

Stills from the movie Paradox of Praxis 1 where the artist pushes a block of ice through the streets of Mexico city until it melts. A way of marking out the existence of the passing of time. I think this is an ingenious way to represent such a thing.




"Alÿs’s work starts with a simple action, either by him or others, which is then documented in a range of media. " (Tate Modern Online, 2010)


Alÿs responds to fleeting and contingent circumstances from the viewpoint of a passerby who is both involved and separate.





When Faith Moves Mountains,2000-2002

Francis Alÿs in collaboration with Cuauhtemoc Medina and Rafael Ortega.

Five hundred volunteers walk over a huge sand dune in Lima, Peru, digging with spades and shifting the dune a few centimetres as they go.They moved a 1600 ft sand dune over 4 inches from its original location.

The Green Line 2004,

Alÿs walked along the 1948 armistice line between Israel and Palestine, trailing a line of green paint behind him, and provoking commentaries on the Israeli/Palestinian conflict.

Other pieces of his art include releasing a fox into the National Portrait Gallery at Night and capturing its wonderings on CCTV, (Nightwatch)

This a video i found on You Tube about some of the artist's creations. It is about 4 minutes and definitely worth a look. The ideas are so varying but make total sense in my eyes to be justified as art. They are things I have never heard of before.





An Exhibition of his work will be shown at Tate Modern from the 15th June 10pounds pp. I think i will definitely be going for a look.

In the of Bruner (1979) this would be considered to be creative.

"Creativity is inventing something so unique that it is astonishing to the viwer or user and produces 'effective surprise'" (Bruner, 1979, p54)

References

Bruner (1979) in Koster (2009) Growing Artists. 4th Edition. Teaching the arts to Young Children.Cengage learning. Delmar.