Carlos Amorales
Remix
Edited by Daniela Lancioni

Published to mark the first exhibition in Italy on Carlos Amorales (as part of celebrations promoted by the Municipality of Rome for the 150th anniversary of Mexico's independence), this monograph confirms the current and enduring vigour of Mexican culture.
This young Mexican artist, presently of great international interest, uses a musical language term to translate the special mix that ties the works presented in this volume. They are six powerful installations, dated between 2005 and 2010, which follow one another without interruption in the space. Though each preserves its individual physiognomy and identity, they merge to give life to a rare ensemble and are based on a practice experimented by Amorales for the first time.
The work begins with the posters in Why Fear the Future? (2005) with silhouettes of black birds with outspread wings, a menacing presence if one thinks about the Hitchcock film, but Amorales faces fear of the future with a question that could erase it. This is followed by Spider Galaxy (2007), a creature that looks like an exotic bird and that is animated, at the beginning, by Galia Eibenschutz. The next work is Black Cloud (2007), one of Amorales' best known works, which is a remarkable swarm of black butterflies, whose presence can be interpreted as a threat or as a sign of collective strength: it is a monumental, seductive and embracing work which has the solidity of a mass and the lightness of a lepidopteron's impalpable wing. The next work is The Skeleton Image Constellation (Liquid Archive) (2009), postcards with more than one thousand images from Amorales' personal archive, called Archivio líquido (Liquid Archive), and with the seven hundred and fifty one black stars of Drifting Star (2010), those that seem like the seven hundred and fifty one fragments of an explosion captured in a striking still image. The last work is the pencil drawing called El estudio por la ventana (2010) which marks the beginning of a new reflection on study intended as the mind of the artist.
All the works presented derive from the potent Archivio líquido, the digital archive begun by Amorales at the end of the 1990s and which has been continuously enriched by new elements which the artist draws on to create every new work. They are images taken from magazines, catalogues, books, and photos taken by Amorales or downloaded from Internet, reworked by the artist through an inventive process involving the practice of hybridisation. Translated into his works, they become drawings, slides, videos, collages, paintings, sculptures, installations, and the covers of records. Archivio líquido is a kind of glossary and it is important for Amorales that others use it, because in so doing its meaning is extended. His images have a symbolic power that can be felt collectively: most times they make reference to fears generated by the conditions of contemporary life. Amorales, a sensitive artist, does not ignore social trends but he does not make them the theme of his work. His desire, as the artist himself has stated, is to evoke that which does not exist.

2010, 25 x 24 cm, 96 pages, 67 colour illustrations
paperback

ISBN 978-88-572-0871-8
€ 24,00