Events — Feb 18, 2020

To accompany the exhibitions Francis Alÿs: Children’s Games in Eye Filmmuseum and Carlos Amorales - The Factory in the Stedelijk Museum, both museums teamed up for a new edition of Eye on Art on performance and registration. 

Price
Via Eye
Location
Eye Filmmuseum
Time
Feb 18, 2020, 7.15 pm until 9.30 pm
Main language
English
  • Carlos Amorales, Los Amorales, 1996. Courtesy the artist, kurimanzutto and Nils Stærk.
  • Francis Alÿs, The Leak, 1995.
  • Francis Alÿs, Paradox of Praxis: Sometimes Making Something Leads to Nothing, 1997.

Visual artists Carlos Amorales (Mexico, 1970) and Gabriël Lester (the Netherlands, 1972) discuss the relationship between registering and performing, drawing comparisons with the work of Francis Alÿs, to whom Eye is currently devoting an exhibition.
A collaboration with Eye Filmmuseum.

The work of Alÿs (born in 1959 in Antwerp) focuses on simple performative actions in public space. The artist usually performs the actions himself, and records them in photographs, films and drawings.

Performances and their registeration also play an important role in the work of visual artists Carlos Amorales (b. 1970, Mexico City) and Gabriël Lester (b. 1972, Amsterdam), who frequently collaborated in the 1990s. What is the relationship between an artwork performed live and its recording? What do artists consider when they do not perform an action themselves but invite someone else? During this edition of Eye on Art, Amorales and Lester will discuss the work of Alÿs, their own practice, and other artists who are important to them.

The program includes a screening of Alÿs’s short film Paradox of Praxis: Sometimes Making Something Leads to Nothing from 1997, in which the artist pushes a big block of ice through the bustling streets of Mexico City. Work by Amorales and Lester, as well as Buster Keaton, Joan Jonas, Bruce Nauman and Krõõt Juurak & Alex Bailey (Performance for Pets) will also feature. The evening is introduced by Marian Cousijn, associate programmer of Eye on Art.

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS

Carlos Amorales (Mexico City, 1970) moved to Amsterdam in 1992 to study fine arts. In 2003, he invited visitors to the Venice Biennale to make lucha libre boots at the Dutch pavilion. In 2004 he founded music label Nuevos Ricos with musician Julián Lede, specializing in producing large-scale concerts and distributing pirated editions of CDs with covers based on the silhouettes from the Liquid Archive, a collection of vector images. Amorales represented Mexico at the 2017 Venice Biennale. His exhibition The Factory is on at Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam until May 17.

Gabriel Lester (Amsterdam, 1972) studied cinema and fine arts. His works can be typified as cinematographic, although he does not always employ film or video. Like cinema, Lesters practice has come to embrace all imaginable media and occupies both time and space. His works propose a tension span and are either implicitly narrative, explicitly visual, or both at once. The artist seldom conveys an explicit message or singular idea, but rather propose ways to relate to the world. Lesters work is shown extensively at museums and art biennials.