Francis Alÿs Bücher

The Sign Painting Project came into being between 1993 and 1997 through a collaboration between Francis Alÿs and professional billboard-painters from Mexico City, particularly Rotulistas Juan Garcia, Enrique Huerta and Emilio Rivera. Alÿs brought the billboard-painters some of his small-format oil paintings and asked them if they would copy and enlarge these motifs. Today the resulting paintings are scattered throughout the world. This book presents the grand scale and multifaceted motifs of the Sign Painting Project for the first time. Francis Alÿs was born in Antwerp in 1959. Since 1987 he has lived and worked in Mexico City. Alÿs studied at the Institut d’Architecture de Tournai and the Instituto Universitario di Architettura di Venezia. He has been the subject of numerous international exhibitions, most recently at Artangel / National Portrait Gallery, London; The Israel Museum, Jerusalem; Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg / Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Madrid / Centro nationale per le arti contemporani, Rome; Schaulager, Basel; and the Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Francis Alys walks, and as he walks, he makes art. This exhibition catalog/flip book recreates Alys's current piece, documenting a specific moment in Frankfurt, when he walks by a long metal fence and runs a stick along its posts, though there is no sound. Alys reflects on the role of laughter and trickery in the creative process. In further pieces, he walks through Havana (wearing magnetic shoes), Mexico City (carrying a loaded gun through the streets until arrested) and Copenhagen (wandering through the town on drugs). His actions leave few traces and as a rule are not well documented but later reconstructed through installations of his paintings, drawings and videos.