PORTIKUS, Frankfurt am Main
Francis Alÿs: “A Story of Deception / Historia de un desengaño”, Patagonia 2006 in collaboration with Olivier Debroise und Rafael Ortega
Courtesy of the artist and Peter Kilchmann Gallery, Zurich.
A Story of Deception Francis Alÿs
Opening: September 1, 2006, 8 p.m.
Exhibition: Sept. 2 – Oct. 15, 2006
PORTIKUS, Frankfurt am Main
Alte Brücke 2 / Maininsel
60311 Frankfurt am Main
http://www.portikus.de
info@portikus.de
T: +49 69 9624454-0
F: +49 69 9624454-24
The exhibition of Francis Alÿs (*1959 Antwerp/Belgium) A Story of Deception includes
the film of the same name that originated from a collaboration with
Olivier Debroise and Rafael Ortega in Patagonia in the spring of 2006
as well as documentation material, on display in vitrines. The project
began in 2003 with the intent to follow up on a story that Alÿs had
heard while undertaking historical-geographical research in the
Argentinian Pampa. The story tells how the Tehuelche people from
Patagonia congregate seasonally to track flocks of the local flightless
birds nandus over hundreds of kilometres until they collapse from
exhaustion. “I was fascinated by the absolute simplicity of the
technique, and of course the use of walking as a weapon, as a hunting
method”.
Alÿs has used walking as a medium in many of his earlier works where
movement evokes situations with unexpected twists and turns. In this
current project, instead of realising an image from this story, Alÿs
has used the narrative’s metaphorical function as a starting point.
While shifting through his collected film and photographic materials,
illusions emerged on the horizon of a dusty, endless highway. Alÿs
followed this phenomenon of atmospheric refraction as he attempted to
capture the ever-vanishing vantage point and what lies behind it in the
picture frame. The approximately two minute long 16mm film shows
nothing more than a trip along a highway, where the incessantly
blurring horizon has been displaced by the heat, and therefore visually
unreachable. The mirage lies at a tangible distance on the horizon only
for a moment, before it vanishes again. “Without
the movement of the viewer/observer, the mirage would be nothing more
than an inert stain, merely an optical vibration in the landscape.”