Given the strange and uneven program, the Reina Sofía has been offering as of late, a show like this one was rather unanticipated. Its importance is self-evident, due to Alÿs’ place in contemporary art as well as his own reservations about overexposure.
The show’s subtitle (Obra pictórica 1992-2003) is already an attention-grabbing puzzle for the visitor to solve since we are talking about an artist whose work could not be more distant from traditional conceptions of art. This slight dissonance, something that could even pass for an imperceptible printing error, is reason enough to come see what Alÿs is presenting today as “painting.”
The show as a whole is conceived around the catalog that accompanies (or originates?) it, also titled El Profeta y la Mosca. The publication seems to mark an important breaking point in Alÿs’ career. In its structure and its content, the book is as evanescent as Alÿs' latest works. Text and images intertwine to generate parallel discourses which at times reinforce and at times contradict each other, thus feeding those spaces of indeterminacy so dear to the artist. The main text, signed by Catherine Lampert, is interrupted constantly and without notice by texts from Plato, D.H. Lawrence, Walter Benjamin, Samuel Beckett, or the Old Testament. The connections between these elements —original text, quotations, reproductions of Alÿs’ works, and a multitude of images and photographs selected by him— are subtle and deliberate and can be read in many ways.
All these elements are in turn displayed around the exhibition halls in two basic structures: on the one hand, very large wooden tables with a methacrylate top under which all the visual sources reproduced in the book are arranged along with sketches and drawings by Alÿs. It is, clearly, an invitation to read rather than to contemplate in the traditional sense. On the other hand, Alÿs has painted the exhibition halls in two-tone, a common practice in old houses. On the upper part of the walls painted gray, Alÿs has arranged a large number of minuscule paintings, each with its own light source, mimicking the painting cabinet of a private residence. Those long, gold-colored lamps over each little painting give the space a surprising feeling of intimacy. However, the painting’s positioning does not follow the notions of traditional museography: we find pieces hung in corners between walls, and seemingly paired pieces have been separated and placed in different halls, which creates a sensation of dejà vu; our tour of the exhibition, the time we devote to the very delicate drawings on vegetal paper arranged on the tables and to the stamps and figures, cutouts, and various images that accompany them, become an intimate, private experience, similar to the experience of reading.
In this respect, and it seems to me this is by design, there is not a large gap between the book and the exhibition as it is presented in the museum. This is why it is necessary to consider the book as a fundamental constitutive element in the exhibition.
The catalog that is traditionally intended as a “guide” for the interpretation of the work becomes a fable that drives us away from any definitive or closed explanation, a recurring theme in Alÿs’ career. Against the usual spirit of the catalog, El Profeta y la Mosca preserves the mystery about how many and which are Alÿs’ works or versions of his works. His own artistic biography, a customary element in this kind of monograph, is presented here as an ink drawing, on one side of which we read the word CURRICULUM and on the other side of which the word VITAE. The words are joined by a line on which a tight-rope walker walks. This is Alÿs poetics in its purest state.
Even so, it is possible to trace the general lines Alÿs is pointing at with the exhibition and the book: walks as a theme have a merely anecdotal character here, and the emphasis is placed on Alÿs as a manufacturer of images, revealing certain theoretical parameters —supports, reproducibility, the notion of open work— that, in what appears more a strategic turn than a failure, Lampert takes care not to fully develop in her text. The agreement between artist and critic is clear, and even the kind of writing bordering on fiction employed by Lampert corresponds to the spirit of Alÿs’ work. This is an exhibition that leaves us with more questions than answers.
The emphasis on Alÿs’ images above and beyond his person or persona is present not only in the main text. Inside the book, we find a strange page marker: the gray outline of one of those “men in suits” typical of Alÿs, who seems to be pointing his finger at something. An ambiguous and omnipresent shadow guides us through the physical and imaginary trajectories proposed by the artist.
ISSA MARÍA BENÍTEZ DUEÑAS