Carlos Amorales

Carlos Amorales

Remix

Palazzo delle Esposizioni

9 November 2010 – 27 February 2011

www.palazzoesposizioni.it

By Emelie Ask

Carlos Amorales’ show Remix at Palazzo delle Esposizioni is one of a series of shows dedicated to Mexico that the museum is presently hosting in its various halls, and the artist’s first exhibition in Italy. Situated on the ground floor, the exhibition consists of five works, which are complemented by an occasional performance on Saturdays and Sundays. The musically influenced title of the show is indicative of Amorales’ intention and own perception of his works; they all intertwine both physically and conceptually, and this notion also has a strong link to the artist’s preferred medium of performance, as will be discussed.

Carlos Amorales was born in Mexico City in 1970 but lives in Amsterdam, where he went to study in the beginning of the 90s and still lives and works as a tutor . The Mid 90s also saw his debut as an artist, and for a long time his focal medium was performance – among his most renowned works is Amorales vs Amorales (1999-2003) - as a result of the artist’s despise of the formalization of art; the act of performance, much as the notion of letting his works fuse physically as in Remix, impede a formalization and determination of art and instead focuses on an ongoing fluidity and the passing of both time and motion. Importantly, the basis of each of the artist’s work is drawn from the digital archive Archivo Liquido, which Amorales initiated in the beginning of the 2000s and consists of photographic images from various sources that are modified to become black silhouettes. Each of his sculptures, installations, drawings, videos and other kinds of art works are then created with these silhouettes as starting points, conceptually or aesthetically.

This of course holds true for the pieces in Remix as well. In fact, each work is made up exclusively of the contrast between black silhouettes on a white background; the first piece the visitor encounters is Drifting Star (2010), an installation of more than 700 plastic pieces hovering in the largest room and amongst which the meandering visitor sees herself reflected in the glossy black pieces. On the surrounding white walls Amorales has integrated El Estudio por la Ventana (2010), a pencil drawing seemingly random but on closer examination revealing shapes of airplanes, spirals and skulls; the notion of movement, cycles and transformation is persistently present. Attached to this main hall of the show are three smaller rooms, the first of which hosting Black Cloud (2007); a three dimensional swarm of black paper butterflies – some of them escaping out on the surface of the pencil drawing and this way attractively introducing the art work – invades the room that also hosts The Skeleton Image Constellation (Liquid Archive) (2009). This latter work is composed of white cards with black silhouettes of various figures that visitors may take with them as a generous and beautiful gift. In the next room, the visitor, still accompanied by the salient butterflies, encounters the work Why Fear the Future? (2006), composed of black, flat bird silhouettes in a symmetrical covering of the walls continuing into the last room where one or two butterflies still decorates the ambience. Despite the exhibition’s rough contrast of black against white, and the simultaneously sensual, arresting and mysterious subject matters of flying creatures – coupled with the plastic reflections of the surroundings adrift in the air - the overall impression is still that of being carried away to, and at the same time included in, a harmonious and attractive world that occasionally is visited by vivid, moving colored birds through the performance Spider Galaxy (2007).