A COPY OF THE LIAR, THE COPY OF THE LIAR

AFTER FRANCIS ALŸS

2011

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Archival pigment print on Hahnemühle Fine Art paper

110 x 165 cm

In 1994, the Belgian neo-conceptual artist Francys Alÿs, who was living in Mexico City, began the series The liar, the copy of the liar, a project in which he commissioned some professional Mexican sign painters to recopy some of his paintings, thus challenging the notion of original and authenticity, by the way setting up a collaborative system for producing art works. This photograph, depicting one of the pieces imagined by Alÿs, extends and reactivates Alÿs‘s approach by "injecting" into  the image a text excerpt from WikiHow - a collaborative website that delivers, among other things, quantity of recipes, tips and tricks for being an artist. Thus, two different ways of envisaging a collaborative work meet here, the first requiring field work and creation of a tangible social bond, while the second develops remotely and anonymously. Moreover, the work makes collide two radically different conceptions of what an artist is: the one that corresponds to the artist’reality, the other to a stereotypical ideology widely spread by the winds.

By a curious irony, John Baldessari had already made a 1968 painting entitled Tips for Artists Who Want to Sell, in which he gave not without humor a set of tips quite similar to those found today on WikiHow: use light colors, choose a good subject matter (landscapes, flowers, Madonna and child...).