Francis Alÿs

Francis Alÿs was born in Antwerp, Belgium, in 1959. After studying architecture in Venice, he moved to Mexico City in 1986, where he currently lives and works. Alÿs is the creator of works that range from video to performance, drawing to animation, painting to photography. The diptych Untitled (Study for Painting and Punishment) consists of two nearly identical images displayed in two different rooms, creating a sense of déjà vu for the viewer—the false impression of having already seen an image or previously experienced a situation—thereby generating a sense of disorientation, an experience that becomes part of the work itself. Alÿs, who views each of his paintings as a performance, regularly employs Mexican painters, as seen in Untitled (Man/Woman with shoe on the head), where the artist painted a small canvas that he then passed to a sign painter in Mexico City to create enlarged versions, allowing for unlimited reproductions. His intention is to challenge the concept of the original artwork and its real market value.