Walkabout: Francis Alys's peripatetic actions have won him acclaim on the global scene. A traveling exhibition surveys the career of this multifaceted artist, while a New York installation makes an artwork of his own unusual collection

This work, "SOMETIMES DOING SOMETHING POETIC CAN BECOME POLITICAL AND SOMETIMES DOING SOMETHING POLITICAL CAN BECOME POETIC" (2004-05), was the centerpiece of Alys's recent exhibition at Zwirner, and it is linked to his walk in Sao Paulo. Once again he walked through a foreign city, holding a dripping can of paint, but in this case political issues are much more frank and pronounced. An excellent film of the action by Julien Devaux (who has often collaborated with the artist) shows Alys walking past Israeli army checkpoints, trailing his green paint. He walks past and among Palestinian kids, and past Orthodox Jews waiting for a bus. He walks across thoroughfares and down side streets, in and out of Jewish and Palestinian neighborhoods, around corners, up a rocky hill where he meets some goats and past the wall of the Old City. His wavering green line is very playful, like a child's doodle writ large, but you always suspect that he'll be arrested forthwith, especially when he passes soldiers with guns. Alys says nothing, doesn't stop to chat on the few occasions when people (mostly children) acknowledge him, and offers no explanation. But his green line is supremely evocative. It makes visible the implicit border that has long divided this city, and its color echoes the original armistice boundary drawn in green pencil on a map by the Israeli commander Moshe Dayan in 1948.

This work has nothing to do with making statements; instead, it poses questions. What if the fierce borders that separate people, nations and cultures were as whimsical, silly and easily traversed as this one? What if there were a free exchange across these borders, and they simply wore away over time? The film of Alys's walk was later shown to a number of people, including a Palestinian anthropologist, an Israeli member of the Knesset, an Israeli activist and a Palestinian journalist, and their insightful commentaries, which you hear as you watch Alys walking, become an essential part of the work. At Zwirner the film was exhibited with an assortment of "gun projectors" on the floor, mixed-medium rifles with attached reels---as if to show films--as well as notes, drawings, photographs and maps that fleshed out the work's background and trajectory. Tackling one of the most vexing conflicts in a way that is at once provocative and humble is exactly the kind of thing at which Alys excels.

All three of these exhibitions underscore the considerable wisdom that suffuses Alys's adventurous work. Coursing through everything, no matter how seemingly mundane and inconsequential, is a large-minded awareness that things rise and fall, appear and disappear, and that the most robust plans, either of individuals or nations, are always subject to accident and flux.

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"Fabiola," organized by the Dia Art Foundation, is currently on view at the Hispanic Society of America, New York [Sept. 20, 2007-Apr. 6, 2008]. "Politics of Rehearsal" opened at the Hammer Museum, Los Angeles [Sept. 30, 2007-Feb. 10, 2008], and travels to the Honolulu Academy of Arts [January-April 2009] and the Museo de Arte del Banco de la Republica, Bogota [April-July 2009]. "SOMETIMES DOING SOMETHING POETIC CAN BECOME POLITICAL AND SOMETIMES DOING SOMETHING POLITICAL CAN BECOME POETIC" appeared at David Zwirner, New York [Feb. 15-Apt 6, 2007].