Carlos Amorales

Kindly donated by the artist and Kurimanzutto Mexico City / New York

El Esplendor geométrico 5 forms part of El Esplendor Geométrico, a series of twelve collages presented at kurimanzutto in February 2015, which incorporate color for the first time into Carlos Amorales work. Despite its apparent abstraction, El Esplendor geométrico recalls landscapes; different shades suggesting the passage of time and seasonal changes of light. Based on smaller compositions made with color paper samples that were then sent out to be cut into wood and painted, these large-format works present collage as an action or as a verb. Beyond its definition as pictorial technique, collage is introduced as a tool to construct meaning, one that springs from the question “what occurs between form and content?” and jumps into form itself. Influenced by a visit to Hans Arp’s studio and his own affinity for Dadaism, Amorales was intrigued by the problem of form and content as political entities. As an artist who finds himself often confronting the political question of “where do we find ourselves now, what do we face?” Amorales approached the issue through colorful grades of abstraction. These works are in some sense historical, they form part of the larger classical movement from figuration to abstraction while commenting on the industrialization of art as a process. Riffing on the harmony between color and form and the mixing of forms, the collages examine structural contrapositions along with the structure of ideology itself.  

Within his artistic research, Carlos Amorales focuses on language and the impossibility/possibility of communicating through means that are unrecognizable or not codified: sounds, gestures, and symbols. Amorales experiments at the limits between image and sign through an array of platforms such as animation, video, film, drawing, installation, performance and sound. His practice establishes different forms of translation - instruments become characters in his films, letters become shapes, and narratives unfold as nonverbal actions. Foundation for many of Amorales’ explorations is the Liquid Archive – a project composed of shapes, lines and nodes instead of words – created by the artist in 1998 and appropriated for over ten years. In addition to the Liquid Archive, Amorales continues to develop further alphabets and systems to translate texts ranging from museum labels to short stories. The works of Amorales exist in an alternate world of their own making, parallel to ours, constantly evolving at the same rhythm that they are produced. Carlos Amorales studied in Amsterdam at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie (1996– 97) and Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten (1992–95). He was artist in residence at the Atelier Calder in Saché (2012), MAC/VAL, Vitry-sur-Seine in France (2011), and as part of the Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship program in Washington, D.C. (2010).

Recent selected solo exhibitions include: The Factory, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (2019), Axioms for Action, MUAC- Museo Universitario de Arte Contemporáneo, Mexico City; traveled to MARCO, Monterrey (2018); Herramientas de trabajo, MAMM-Museo de Arte Moderno de Medellín, Colombia (2017); Prelude, Bellas Artes Projects Outpost, Manila, Philippines (2017); Carlos Amorales, Turku Art Museum, Finland (2016); We Will See How Everything Reverberates, as part of The Dual Year of the United Kingdom and Mexico, Turner Contemporary, Margate (2015); The Man Who Did All Things Forbidden, Philadelphia Museum of Art, United States (2014); Germinal, Museo Tamayo,

Carlos Amorales represented Mexico at the 57th Venice Biennial with project Life in the Folds (2017). 

Carlos Amorales lives and works in Mexico City.