Francis Alӱs. wind-GROW (Afghan Projects, 2010-2014)

Exhibition wind-GROW (Afghan Projects, 2010-2014) is the first in Poland individual presentation of work by Francis Alӱsa (b. 1959). The project, in collaboration with the Museo d'Arte Contemporanea Donnaregina-MADRE in Naples, focuses on recent works Alӱsa made ​​during his multiple visits to Afghanistan in 2010-2014. Job title REEL-Unreel video (wind-GROW), accompanied by an extensive selection of paintings, drawings, collages, sketches, documents and efemeraliów make up the "Afghan projects." They form a kind of archive structure reminiscent of a travel diary. Will be shown in conjunction with two earlier, iconic works by this artist: "Paradox of Praxis I (Sometimes Making Something Leads to Nothing)" and "The Green Line", in which Francis Alӱs engaging in a dialogue with the modernist tradition of the medium of sculpture and painting. REEL- Unreel (wind-GROW), a film produced in 2011 in the framework document (13), is a major work in the exhibition, and also statement of the artist on the art of film, a kind of tribute to the outgoing analog film history. On the one hand the title refers to the one in the narrative, the other to the phenomenon of the film medium, with winding and winding the tape on the projector. Alӱs also uses a sort of play on words in English, reel / real (wind / real) and unreel / unreal (expand / unreal) to emphasize far from the reality of the picture that the Western media had created on modern Afghanistan. Francis Alӱs is the author of works formally very different from the video works on installations, paintings, drawings, animations, objects and photographs. This is one of the most important contemporary artists, known worldwide for its performative action documented on video, penetrating into the social and political models of urban environments. The artist uses a non-traditional creative methods, including almost obsessively practicing walking around the city, so that individualizes the notion of public space, and also reveals the tension between what is political and what is poetic. Francis Alӱs medium of performance used to interpret the complex relationship between political issues, social and cultural rights in contemporary society.

Francis Alÿs (b. 1959, Antwerp, Belgium) - since 1986, lives and works in Mexico City. A retrospective exhibition of the artist ("Francis Alÿs: A Story of Deception") was organized in the years 20102011 by Tate Modern, London; Wiels Centre d'Art Contemporain, Brussels; MoMA-Museum of Modern Art, New York and MoMA PS1-Long Island City, New York. Alӱs also had many solo exhibitions at such prestigious institutions as the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin (2010); The Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago (2008); Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2007); Hirshhorn Museum-Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC (2006); Portikus, Frankfurt (2006); MALBA, Buenos Aires (2006); Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg; Musée d'Art Contemporain, Avignon (2004); Kunsthaus, Zurich (2003); Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid (2003). In 2012, on the occasion of the Documenta (13), the artist presented in Kabul, in the ruins of Behzad Cinema, theater specifically shared on this occasion, his film REEL-Unreel - a job, a major component of the exhibition at the CCA in Warsaw. Alÿs has participated in many international art biennials, including Bienal de São Paulo (2010, 2004 and 1998), the Venice Biennale (2007, 2001 and 1999), Shanghai Biennale (2002), Istanbul Biennial (2001 and 1999) and the Havana Biennial (2000 and 1994).