Francisco Ruiz de Infante

Francisco Ruiz de Infante is a multifaceted author living and working between Strasbourg and Auberive (France). Since 1999, he has been coordinator of the research group Art Hors-Format –Time Arts- at the Haute École des Arts du Rhin (Strasbourg). As an artist, he has shown major projects at centers like the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia in Madrid, the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao, the Maison de l’Image in Geneva, the Blaffer Gallery, Houston, the ZKM in Karlsruhe, the Kunsthalle in Bonn, the Museo Carrillo Gil in Mexico City, Centro de Arte La Panera in Lleida, and the Metronom gallery in Barcelona.

In 2008 he launched a cycle titled “Ecosistemas BlueSky” which has given rise to exhibitions, films and publishing products in diverse contexts: Argentina (Espacio Fundaci.n Telefonica, Buenos Aires), France (Atheneum de Dijon; Galerie Fernand Léger in Ivry-sur-Seine/Grand Paris), Spain (Artium, Alava; Galeria Elba Benitez Madrid; Fundacion Botin, Santander) … Video works produced over the course of the cycle include HolyBilis (2013), B.S.o.D. (Training attitude) (2009), and his latest piece, Campos eventuales (2019-20).

From his extensive film catalogue, we can cite the feature-length The Wolves (1995) and the short film Les choses simples (winner of a Prix Découverte at the Festival du Nouveau Cinéma de Montréal, 1993).

He is currently working closely with choreographer Olga Mesa on their joint theatrical, plastic and audiovisual arts project “Carmen // Shakespeare” (2013‑21). www.fueradecampo.org

An artist hors-format, I belong to a generation whose sensibility has been shaped by the encounter and confrontation between audiovisual machines for control and entertainment, and other, apparently simpler or more commonplace materials. Juggling with the concepts of “high tech” and “emergency DIY,” I seek to reconstruct the workings of memory as it informs the present (with all the misinformation, redundancies and accelerations produced by the unconscious mind).

The notion of multilinear progression predominates in my artistic process. I lay down multiple paths, tunnels, thematic series; proposing journeys of initiation that seek to establish dialogues, at times paradoxical, with the spectator.
References to the passages of childhood/adolescence/adulthood run throughout my projects, conjuring spaces in which the “everyday strange” is brought to the surface through a narrative of Baroque structures.
My work is a giant treasure hunt where each spectator has to find his or her own logic.

Last updated: 16th November, 2020