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Lot Essay
Belgian born Francis Als has adopted Mexico as the point of departure for his artistic activities. As the artist has stated: "I started playing with 'stills' in the spring of 1993. It seemed that my work was getting trapped within its own hermetic logic, and that it would be a good time to practice a breakdown of my methods and obssesions in sculpture, through a string of figurative scenes. Moving to small-format canvases, I began combining a man in a suit, a piece of furniture and some object, subjecting the body of the protagonist to a range of physically feasible relations in weight, balance, etc.
I borrowed the style (and to some extent, the main character) from the street advertisement seen in my neighborhood of Mexico City. These panels-propped on side walks or hung over storefronts-are painted on metal by commercial sign workshops called rotulistas.
To make the series more anonymous, I commissioned various rotulistas to produce enlarged copies of my originals. There would be no limit to the potential versions of the original, nor would their execution be confined to one studio per model.
The project has gradually deviated from its original illustrative purpose, as the copying process became increasingly important. By now it doesn't matter whether you are looking at a model, a copy, or a copy of a copy. I myself have started copying my own models, under the influence of the new versions."
Francis Als, The Liar, The Copy of the Liar, Galera Ramis Barquet, Mexico, 1994, p. 43
I borrowed the style (and to some extent, the main character) from the street advertisement seen in my neighborhood of Mexico City. These panels-propped on side walks or hung over storefronts-are painted on metal by commercial sign workshops called rotulistas.
To make the series more anonymous, I commissioned various rotulistas to produce enlarged copies of my originals. There would be no limit to the potential versions of the original, nor would their execution be confined to one studio per model.
The project has gradually deviated from its original illustrative purpose, as the copying process became increasingly important. By now it doesn't matter whether you are looking at a model, a copy, or a copy of a copy. I myself have started copying my own models, under the influence of the new versions."
Francis Als, The Liar, The Copy of the Liar, Galera Ramis Barquet, Mexico, 1994, p. 43