Francis Alys at K'Rd Artspace

Brian Butler believes artists such as Francis Alys, whose work is pictured, need to build a rapport. Picture / Carolyn Robertson

Francis Alys' (to be continued) 1992- is the first solo exhibition in New Zealand for the Mexico City-based, Belgian-born artist and the first Artspace project for new director Brian Butler, who arrived from Los Angeles in late September.

Butler, who established the Los Angeles 1301PE Gallery in the front room of his house in 1991, says Alys' exhibition is the first instalment in a project that will conclude in three years, allowing the artist to develop a rapport with New Zealand.

"If we are going to bring artists here from abroad," he says, "then it is either to begin or establish a working relationship between New Zealand and that artist.

"Just like if artists go offshore, then it's not only for them to have a first-time situation but something where there will be this exchange that will be ongoing."

Alys will visit next year and the following before concluding the project, allowing New Zealanders to become involved with the process of developing an exhibition, rather than just catching the final result.

"You are making a packaged product that, if you are the viewer, you come to at the very end of the project," says Butler.

"You have no understanding of the ups and downs or any relationship to the artist. And when you see the show, generally the artist is there and gives a lecture or a walkthrough which, in my mind, is basically a way for the institution or the viewers to feel good about themselves.

"The institution can then say, 'We are telling you what to think and then you are happy'. And then the viewer is saying, 'I didn't have to work very hard for that and now I know what it means'. I thought it would be more interesting if you could turn it on its head and it was about the unfolding of something."

In the same way that Alys' work often involves extensive walking around a city to become intimate with its nuances, Butler prefers exhibitions that reward spending time. "One needs to have time to come back again and again. My feeling is that the exhibition should be difficult but the entrance should be free.

"For me, it is a real ethical question because we are like the libraries of the visual arts. Here is a real, interesting, contemporary person who is an artist and you should come and look at their work and spend your time and get as much information and pleasure, or whatever, out of it."

Butler believes art is a visual language that needs to be learned, just like reading, to fully appreciate it.

"It takes a long time to learn how to look. It's a language and we often try to simplify that language by including text. I think one has to learn how to look from a very early age, and then be given time to look. Just like you can't read James Joyce on the first go, it's something that takes time."

Coming from the multicultural environment of Los Angeles, it is not surprising that Butler is interested in how art from different places translates when it travels.

"I am always interested in looking at art by artists who are from Italy or Belgium but don't speak a second language. Is the work translatable or are they only thinking in a particular language, in a particular mindset?

"There's this thing we can't get away from, the globalisation of images. Someone who can play with languages and is fluent in a number of languages, maybe what's happening in their head when they are writing or making visual art, they always have that flexibility of looking outside the immediate culture."

Living in Los Angeles, rather than New York, is a situation Butler compares to the difference between New Zealand and Australia.

"You are really thinking as a second city or a second country but I think that is really healthy because it means you're not provincial. The most provincial city in the world is New York because it thinks it is the most important city in the world.

"Los Angeles is unwieldy ... people are coming from all over the world, there are 162 languages spoken in Los Angeles and it's a fairly affordable city to live in, and I think the same is true of Auckland."

What: Francis Alys (to be continued) 1992-
Where and when: Artspace, 300 K Rd, to Nov 19