These drawings, from my perspective, symbolize many hours of talking to myself: daydreaming, reasoning, scolding-my moments. Macy Gray’s “A Moment to Myself” would be my choice of musical accompaniment to these images. (I often hear music when I look at art. Or see images when listening to music.) The Francis Alys drawing on the left is titled “Untitled: (Study for Father and Son)”. I do not know the title of the Alys’s drawing on the right, so I shall offer, “Untitled: (A Moment to Myself); it illustrates that too much self talk can be like slamming into a brick wall.

Francis Alys’s performed an art video piece, titled Rehearsal 1, in which a vintage Volkswagen Bug repeatedly drove up a steep dirt road, only to roll to the bottom before cresting the top of the hill. The video footage was synchronized to the musical accompaniment of a marching band. When the band made an error the car would descend. Often Alys’s work involves a performance of a Sisyphean task, questioning a life with an eternity of futile labor. For some, this is a hideous existence, while for others it offers satisfied life pursuit. If one were to think of the Sisyphus myth in terms of the natural world and consider the contented life of a bee, an ant, or squirrel, each of these creature’s daily routine fulfills its life’s work and is essential to nature’s cycle of life. Look at the life of athletes, as I am, and how day-to-day, week-to-week, athletes train to reach their personal best. Perhaps Sisyphus was pursuing his personal best, hoping each and every time his assent up the mountain would be faster than the last, perhaps he cursed the gods or reigned defiant against them for his lot in life. One could say in every ascent he reached his goal. Alys might be expressing his personal striving to reach perfection in his art. A friend, an artist, who studied four years with a Zen-brush painting master, and in those years she painted over and over the letter I, striving to find not only perfection, but Zen.

In some sense, talking to oneself is a Sisyphean task. Many people, in spite of talking themselves into changing, find themselves in the same situation over and over again, working out the same problems from before. Writing a blog is a kin to talking to oneself; but it is more like shouting at the edge of valley and allowing your voice to echo into infinity. Perhaps, somewhere, someone will hear.  Hopefully, if it is a Sisyphean task, with each post I might influence change in others and maybe also in myself. So, in summation Francis Alys’s art is about each individual’s contribution to the cycle of life.

And, on a final note…