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Francis Alÿs, “La Leçon de Musique,” circa 2000, oil on canvas on wood, courtesy David Zwirner, New York City.

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FOR 9/7

MAJOR EXHIBITION SHOWING FRANCIS ALYS TO OPEN AT HAMMER MUSEUM SEPT. 30 w/1 cut

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LOS ANGELES, CALIF. — “Francis Alys: Politics of Rehearsal,” the first large-scale museum exhibition in the United States devoted to the career of Mexico City-based artist Francis Alys, will be on view at the Hammer Museum September 30–February 10.

Alys works in a wide range of media, including painting, drawing, performance, film, video installation, animation and photography. His work has a simplicity that makes it instantly accessible, and a complexity that resonates long after the work has first been seen. From the beginning of his career as an artist, Alys has adopted a way of working that tends to reject conclusions in favor of repetition and recalibration.

To date, exhibitions of Alys’s work have emphasized issues of place, particularly connections to Mexico City, his adopted home. In contrast, this thematic retrospective will focus on concepts of rehearsal and repetition, failure and success, storytelling and performance, exploring how these ideas inform Alys’s varied practice.

“Francis Alys: Politics of Rehearsal” is organized by Russell Ferguson, chair, department of art, University of California, Los Angeles, and adjunct curator, Hammer Museum. The exhibition’s conceptual framework of rehearsal and related themes arose from conversations between Ferguson and Alys over several years. Alys has described the work as “a sort of discursive argument composed of episodes, metaphors or parables, staging the experience of time in Latin America.”

In the late 90s Alys began specifically to examine the mechanisms of rehearsal as such. His film Ensayo I (Rehearsal I), shows a red Volkswagen attempting to reach the top of a steep hill in Tijuana. At the same time a soundtrack is heard that consists of a danzon band attempting to learn a new song. The two elements are in fact synchronized. Each time the band breaks down and abandons the attempt to play through the song, the car’s driver (Alys) also gives up, and the car rolls backwards down the hill again.

As Alys has described this work: “The stubborn repetition effect hints at a story which is constantly delayed, and where the attempt to formulate the story takes the lead over the story itself. It is a story of struggle rather than one of achievement, an allegory in process rather than a quest for synthesis.”

Similarly pairing music and incomplete activity, Ensay II features a woman rehearsing an old-fashioned strip-tease against a bare stage curtain. The exhibition will also feature other works that engage with the idea of rehearsal, among them some of Alys’s most acclaimed pieces. One such work, Song for Lupita, 1998, is an animated film loop of a woman pouring water back and forth between two glasses. The animation is accompanied by the endless repetition of a specially recorded musical soundtrack.

R.e.h.e.a.r.s.a.l., 2000, shows an animator working on the word “rehearsal” itself. It is a pyramid structure that slowly advances letter by letter to the whole word, then steps down again. Another piece, When Faith Moves Mountains, 2002, is a video projection documenting a performance in which several thousand volunteers equipped with shovels moved a giant sand dune on the outskirts of Lima. The dune moved only a few inches, but it did move, thanks to the coordinated efforts of a huge number of people.

All of the work in the exhibition will be accompanied by preparatory drawings for which Alys is renowned, as well as by paintings, documents and further video work.

“Francis Alys: Politics of Rehearsal” will be accompanied by a full color, hardcover catalog written by the exhibition’s curator, Russell Ferguson.

Alys was born in Antwerp, Belgium, in 1959, and trained as an architect, studying both in his native country and in Venice, Italy. In 1986, he moved to Mexico City, and within a few years he had left the field of architecture for a broader-based visual arts practice. Along with Gabriel Orozco and Damien Ortega, Alys is one of the key members of a generation of Mexico City-based artists who emerged in the 1990s and have won worldwide acclaim.

The Hammer Museum is at 10899 Wilshire Boulevard. For information, 310-443-7020 or www.hammer.ucla.edu.