Francis Alÿs, LA DÉPENSE, Rockbund Art Museum, Shanghai
© Francis Alÿs
Courtesy Rockbund Art Museum

In the framework of his 2018 exhibition programming as the Director of the Rockbund Art Museum, Larys Frogier invited Yuko Hasegawa to be the guest curator of the Francis Alÿs solo exhibition LA DÉPENSE. As Yuko Hasegawa states:

"In a China transformed by a fast-paced transition to capitalism and the efficiencies of technology, this exhibition LA DÉPENSE in many ways posits values antithetical to such developments. The title, which translates literally as “consumption,” is taken from Georges Bataille's more nuanced notion that excessively “non-productive consumption” (dépense improductive) is just as important in human activity as productive consumption. This concept, which maps onto Alÿs’s practice with ease, for example, in Tornado, a film which captures the artist's courageous and foolhardy action of leaping into the middle of a tornado with a camera in hand; or Deception, which presents a car driving through a mirage, casting doubt on our sense of sight. Other works, like Le Temps du Sommeil, which consists of 108 images from dreams; and a significant number of drawings done for an animation of less than one minute depicting the subtle gestures of a woman smoothing her hair and then trying to tie it in a knot meanwhile suggest a “moving, transitioning” to a state where content and meaning seem to emerge from inconsequential, ineffective, and unproductive actions and details. These works also suggests a shift from “doing” to “speaking/telling.”

Courageously grappling with the status quo; casting doubts on our visual sense; rethinking the meaning of the labor of manual work and what it means to consume time: these are among the subtle messages from Alÿs’s work that can be applied to the situation in China.

This exhibition is an invitation to spectators to generate their own stories, and begin to tell them, relay them, through “encounters,” through seeing in person. Each individual becomes the narrator of what they have seen with their own eyes; and these narratives in turn form countless strands that connect to the lines spun by the artist: this is what the experience of a Francis Alÿs exhibition is all about."

Publication

Sternberg Press
Co-Publisher: Rockbund Art Museum
Edited by Guo Juan, Ming Lin

Essay by Yuko Hasegawa.
Translation: Christopher Stephens, Lin Ye
Desing: Wang Jiayi, Du Yun

Published in May 2019
English - Chinese
160 pages
Thread bound
14 x 21 cm
€ 29
Out of print

ISBN 978-3-95679-439-1

Status: out of print

The publiction Francis Alÿs LA DÉPENSE provides an insightful and critical look into Alÿs's practices. With his acute poetic and imaginative powers of perception, Alÿs raises questions about anthropology and geopolitics, creating works from his close observations of everyday life.
The paper used in this publication has the touch and toughness of fiber. This durable material fits Francis Alÿs' reflections on a large amount of consumption in our daily life. A particular combination of Chinese and Western reading habits in the binding and typographic reading style is also a unique feature of this publication.