Your browser does not support the video tag.
Your browser does not support the video tag.
Marco Cadioli - The Whirlpool
  • © ARSHAKE | ISSN 2283-3676
  • CONTACT
  • Login
Arshake
  • ABOUT US
    • ABOUT US
    • PROJECT
    • MEDIA/PARTNERSHIPS
    • CONTACT US
  • FOCUS
    • All
    • focus
    • From the Past
    • Interview
    La caverna contemporanea di Miltos Manetas

    La caverna contemporanea di Miltos Manetas

    People Make Television at Raven Row

    People Make Television at Raven Row

    The Transparency of Time

    The Transparency of Time

    Un presente indicativo

    Un presente indicativo

    Abe Sugarman at Arebyte Gallery in London

    Abe Sugarman at Arebyte Gallery in London

    Tanti auguri e saluti

    Tanti auguri e saluti

    EMΣT | National Museum of Contemporary Art

    EMΣT | National Museum of Contemporary Art

    Driving Energy Terna Award 2023

    Driving Energy Terna Award 2023

    Federica Di Carlo at PostmastersROMA

    Federica Di Carlo at PostmastersROMA

  • FRAME
    FRAME > Searching for the Sky (While Maintaining Equilibrium)

    FRAME > Searching for the Sky (While Maintaining Equilibrium)

    FRAME > Nenuphar de Molitor

    FRAME > Nenuphar de Molitor

    FRAME > Mondi sommersi

    FRAME > Mondi sommersi

    FRAME > Frozen Flowers

    FRAME > Frozen Flowers

    FRAME > THE PROPHETS

    FRAME > THE PROPHETS

    FRAME > Photonic Empathy

    FRAME > Photonic Empathy

    FRAME > WoodArc

    FRAME > WoodArc

    FRAME > SWARM

    FRAME > SWARM

    FRAME > Round Balance

    FRAME > Round Balance

  • VIDEO POST
    VIDEO POST > Navigating Noise

    VIDEO POST > Navigating Noise

    VIDEO POST > Fractured

    VIDEO POST > Fractured

    VIDEO POST > Hi! I Got Hacked!

    VIDEO POST > Hi! I Got Hacked!

    VIDEO POST > Spambots

    VIDEO POST > Spambots

    VIDEO POST > Tape Pull-out Ensemble

    VIDEO POST > Tape Pull-out Ensemble

    VIDEO POST > Parallels

    VIDEO POST > Parallels

    VIDEO POST > Tales of Entropy

    VIDEO POST > Tales of Entropy

    VIDEO POST > Vague Boundaries

    VIDEO POST > Vague Boundaries

    VIDEO POST > JAZZ POP CORN

    VIDEO POST > JAZZ POP CORN

  • SPECIAL PROJECT
    • ARSHAKE’S BANNER
    • CRITICAL GROUNDS
    • YOUNG ITALIAN ARTISTS
    • GAME OVER
      • GAME OVER • Loading
      • GAME OVER • CALL FOR IDEAS (5.0)
    • EXTERNAL PROJECTS
      • BACKSTAGE | ONSTAGE
      • PERCORSI • 6 years of the Terna Prize
      • TEMPO IMPERFETTO
  • RESOURCES
    • CALLS
    • ARCHIVE
    • ONLINE RESOUCES
  • it IT
  • en English
No Result
View All Result
  • ABOUT US
    • ABOUT US
    • PROJECT
    • MEDIA/PARTNERSHIPS
    • CONTACT US
  • FOCUS
    • All
    • focus
    • From the Past
    • Interview
    La caverna contemporanea di Miltos Manetas

    La caverna contemporanea di Miltos Manetas

    People Make Television at Raven Row

    People Make Television at Raven Row

    The Transparency of Time

    The Transparency of Time

    Un presente indicativo

    Un presente indicativo

    Abe Sugarman at Arebyte Gallery in London

    Abe Sugarman at Arebyte Gallery in London

    Tanti auguri e saluti

    Tanti auguri e saluti

    EMΣT | National Museum of Contemporary Art

    EMΣT | National Museum of Contemporary Art

    Driving Energy Terna Award 2023

    Driving Energy Terna Award 2023

    Federica Di Carlo at PostmastersROMA

    Federica Di Carlo at PostmastersROMA

  • FRAME
    FRAME > Searching for the Sky (While Maintaining Equilibrium)

    FRAME > Searching for the Sky (While Maintaining Equilibrium)

    FRAME > Nenuphar de Molitor

    FRAME > Nenuphar de Molitor

    FRAME > Mondi sommersi

    FRAME > Mondi sommersi

    FRAME > Frozen Flowers

    FRAME > Frozen Flowers

    FRAME > THE PROPHETS

    FRAME > THE PROPHETS

    FRAME > Photonic Empathy

    FRAME > Photonic Empathy

    FRAME > WoodArc

    FRAME > WoodArc

    FRAME > SWARM

    FRAME > SWARM

    FRAME > Round Balance

    FRAME > Round Balance

  • VIDEO POST
    VIDEO POST > Navigating Noise

    VIDEO POST > Navigating Noise

    VIDEO POST > Fractured

    VIDEO POST > Fractured

    VIDEO POST > Hi! I Got Hacked!

    VIDEO POST > Hi! I Got Hacked!

    VIDEO POST > Spambots

    VIDEO POST > Spambots

    VIDEO POST > Tape Pull-out Ensemble

    VIDEO POST > Tape Pull-out Ensemble

    VIDEO POST > Parallels

    VIDEO POST > Parallels

    VIDEO POST > Tales of Entropy

    VIDEO POST > Tales of Entropy

    VIDEO POST > Vague Boundaries

    VIDEO POST > Vague Boundaries

    VIDEO POST > JAZZ POP CORN

    VIDEO POST > JAZZ POP CORN

  • SPECIAL PROJECT
    • ARSHAKE’S BANNER
    • CRITICAL GROUNDS
    • YOUNG ITALIAN ARTISTS
    • GAME OVER
      • GAME OVER • Loading
      • GAME OVER • CALL FOR IDEAS (5.0)
    • EXTERNAL PROJECTS
      • BACKSTAGE | ONSTAGE
      • PERCORSI • 6 years of the Terna Prize
      • TEMPO IMPERFETTO
  • RESOURCES
    • CALLS
    • ARCHIVE
    • ONLINE RESOUCES
No Result
View All Result
Arshake
No Result
View All Result
Home exhibitions

Francis Alÿs at the Museum MADRE

Ilaria Tamburro by Ilaria Tamburro
06/05/2018
in exhibitions

 Reel Unreel fotogramma 0

The artistic practice of Francis Alÿs (b. 1959 Antwerp, Belgium) is marked by the constant exchange between poetry and politics, as clearly stated in the subtitle of the 2004 video The Green Line – «Sometimes doing something poetic can become political and sometimes doing something political can become poetic» which closes and also opens the large and absolutely «palindromic» retrospective exhibit that the Madre Museum in Naples in dedicating to him. This exhibition is presented in co-production with Warsaw’s Centre for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle and curated by Andrea Viliani and Eugenio Viola.

Reel Unreel fotogramma 2

 Alÿs deconstructs the medium, crushing its conventional function in order to provide space for new idiomatic systems, allowing him to cross over into the surreal: painting, sculpture, photography and videos are the basics for an architecture of the absurd which sees a combination of reality and illusion. Many of the works by this Belgian artist originate from performance elements that are only seemingly inconclusive such as the 1997 work Sometimes Making Something Leads to Nothing in which he personally pushes an ice cube through the streets of Mexico City for nine hours until it is completely melted. An aesthetic gesture which calls to mind Allan Kaprow’s happenings such as Kaprow’s Drag (1984) or Fluids (1967), for example. An inverse and poetically destructive sculptural operation that places emphasis upon the futile efforts of a country like Mexico that, notwithstanding  appearances, has not yet completed the process of modernization and social development to which it aspires.

Exploring urgent issues and marginalization contexts like a modern-day flâneur, the artist crosses through frontier areas, cultural and territorial boundaries: in the aforementioned work The Green Line, he walked for two days along the Israel border as dictated by the 1948 conflict, marking it with a long, green line drawn with the paint  dripping from the can he carried with him during his promenade.

Studio per Reel Unreel Penna e matita su carta

The technique of physically and mentally crossing over made it possible for Alÿs to become thoroughly familiar with the reality in which he moves, to study and decipher the human and urban panorama «to transfer social tension into a narration that, it turn, transforms the imaginary landscape into a place», in the words of the artist himself. There is a dynamic sense of a transient state and incompletion in his works; his works are open systems just ambiguous enough to give the audience countless interpretations since a precise communications is never totally possible.

The lack of communication, the difficult access to full awareness of the complex situation, like the one in Afghanistan, is the theme of the central work on display in Naples: REEL-UNREEL created in 2011 for dOCUMENTA (13). This film reveals the artist’s ability to look within the folds of a reality which is too often falls prey of the unreliable coverage from the West – where violence and the dehumanization of the country reign supreme. The subjects of the videos are several Afghan children playing in the hills of Kabul as they roll two circles with the use of a wooden stick. The circles are reels of film that are constantly being reeled and unreeled, marking and defining (albeit temporarily) these areas. Thus, a spatial re-semanticization to cancel the cultural stereotypes offered by the media and Guy Debord’s prophetic «Society of the Spectacle». The artist barely touches upon an amnesia of violence to focus attention on the present and the need to travel the world with an objective eye. In this way, by using a game as his filter, we can explore those areas scarred by war, the true protagonists of the video, and perceive a different awareness of this «alien» universe.

Inspired by the Taliban’s destruction of thousands of film reels in the square across from the Afghan Film Archives, this work is a reflection upon the oppression of the Regime and, more generally, upon the boundaries of freedom of thought and knowledge afflicting many Western societies  (under false pretences).

Studio per Reel Unreel pittura ad olio su cartolina 2011 2012

The ambivalence of Francis Alÿs’ research is revealed immediately in the title of the main work. Reel-Unreel reminds us of the assonance of two other English words: Real – Unreal, stressing the way we can slide through reality and imaginary. This trait is present in the work and all the others derived from it.  There are large tables on display on the second floor of the museum presenting the creative process of the work: sketches, drawings, projects and collages that accompany the spectator into the artist’s thought process. Small canvases hang on the walls, the Color Bar Paintings, with their bright vertical rectangles in primary colours that call to mind the coloured bars used in television production to indicate the interruption of audio and visual signals, especially on analogical devices. Actually, these colours conceal most of the paintings reproducing the details of the Afghan landscape, perfectly simulating the interruption of the transmission of a «message», the obvious lack of communication between Kabul, the artist and the rest of the world. Among these small paintings, there are single-coloured canvases where the symbolic colours of military uniforms and apparently innocuous post cards are decontextualized. Military weapons and helicopters appear in a collage of real and surreal images that seem to want to demonstrate to what extent the war has become simply a part of the view.

ALYFR0720 0000

This work by Alÿs is a political one that also conceals a more subtle reflection upon the function of art, on just how much it can become an instrument of the fracture of dominant thought. In fact, the artist leaves no specific interpretation of individual responsibility. He offers a critical testimonial that triggers a free process of individual reflection.


Francis Alÿs, REEL-UNREEL (AFGHAN PROJECTS, 2010-14), curated by Andrea Viliani, Eugenio Viola, Museo Madre, Naples, Italy (in collaboration with: Centre for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle, Varsavia), 14.06 – 22.09.2014

images

(1 cover) Francis Alÿs, Reel-Unreel, 2011, Kabul, Afghanistan with Julien Devaux, Ajmal Maiwandi, frame  (video-documentation of an action), photo © Ajmal Maiwandi 2011 (2) Francis Alÿs, Reel-Unreel, 2011, Kabul, Afghanistan with Julien Devaux, Ajmal Maiwandi, frame (video-documentation of an action), courtesy of the artist; David Zwirner, New York-London (3) Francis Alÿs, Reel-Unreel, 2011, Kabul, Afghanistan with Julien Devaux, Ajmal Maiwandi, frame (video-documentation of an action), photo © Ajmal Maiwandi, 2011 (4) Francis Alÿs, Untitled – Studio per Reel-Unreel, pen and pencil on paper  (5) Untitled – Studio for Reel-Unreel, oil painting on postcard, 2011-2012 (6) Untitled – Studio per Reel-Unreel, oil on printed paper, 2012.

Tags: ars
ShareTweetShareSend
Previous Post

ISMAR: «Beyond Interface»

Next Post

Iñaki Bonillas for the DIA Art Foundation

Next Post

Iñaki Bonillas for the DIA Art Foundation

CALLS

Driving Energy Terna Award 2023
Calls

Driving Energy Terna Award 2023

22/02/2023
S+T+ARTS Prize 2023
Calls

S+T+ARTS Prize 2023

04/02/2023
RE:HUMANISM Art Prize: SPARKS AND FRICTIONS
Calls

RE:HUMANISM Art Prize: SPARKS AND FRICTIONS

01/02/2023
Terna.  Driving Energy Prize
Calls

Terna. Driving Energy Prize

13/06/2022

CRITICAL GROUNDS

Critical Gounds #13 – Massimo Maiorino, The Artist as Archaeologist.
Critical Grounds

Critical Gounds #13 – Massimo Maiorino, The Artist as Archaeologist.

08/07/2020
Critical Gounds #12 – Filiberto Menna «PROGETTARE» IL FUTURO
Critical Grounds

Critical Gounds #12 – Filiberto Menna «PROGETTARE» IL FUTURO

26/11/2019
Facebook Twitter Instagram

Arshake is a collaborative artistic project, blurring the borders between art, science and technology, information and production.

  • Focus
  • Video post
  • Frame
  • Special Project
  • Interview
  • Calls
  • Exhibitions

One more step - Check your email and click the confirmation link

© 2012-2022 – ARSHAKE

No Result
View All Result
  • ABOUT US
    • ABOUT US
    • PROJECT
    • MEDIA/PARTNERSHIPS
    • CONTACT US
  • FOCUS
  • FRAME
  • VIDEO POST
  • SPECIAL PROJECT
    • ARSHAKE’S BANNER
    • CRITICAL GROUNDS
    • YOUNG ITALIAN ARTISTS
    • GAME OVER
      • GAME OVER • Loading
      • GAME OVER • CALL FOR IDEAS (5.0)
    • EXTERNAL PROJECTS
      • BACKSTAGE | ONSTAGE
      • PERCORSI • 6 years of the Terna Prize
      • TEMPO IMPERFETTO
  • RESOURCES
    • CALLS
    • ARCHIVE
    • ONLINE RESOUCES

© 2012-2022 – ARSHAKE

Welcome Back!

Login to your account below

Forgotten Password?

Retrieve your password

Please enter your username or email address to reset your password.

Log In
This website uses cookies. By continuing to use this website you are giving consent to cookies being used. Visit our Privacy and Cookie Policy.