Carlos Amorales, Residency January to March 2012
Carlos Amorales was born in 1970, he lives and works in Mexico City.
At the Atelier Calder, Carlos Amorales has created a new series of sculptures combining mobiles and musical instruments, soliciting the participation of the spectator. Indeed, the latter was invited to come and play his own score on the cymbals hanging from the ends of the metal rods.
The work, which at first resembles a sculpture, is gradually transformed into a performance, where sounds and movements are associated.
This situation is of particular interest to Amorales, as a tension is created between the spectators who participate and the observers who remain in the background. Thus at any moment, the situation is likely to fall into an almost unbearable chaotic state.
For the past fifteen years or so, Carlos Amorales has been developing a visual alphabet, made up of vectorial drawings that he uses in all of his creations (drawings, sculptures or installations). This visual alphabet is made up of silhouettes, which Carlos Amorales collects from magazines and newspapers. They can represent animals, characters in motion, but also car or plane crashes, terrorist attacks, scenes of urban violence, ecological disasters.
It is these silhouettes that we find in the series of small sculptures that he imagined and had made by a blacksmith in the region of Saché.
The way in which Carlos Amorales combines these images, contributes to create an agonizing environment, reinforced by the black colour of the stylized silhouettes, and without relief. Amorales draws from this base, which he uses as a tool, which will allow him to create new images and installations.
Carlos Amorales' universe is inspired by the fantastic world, the art of horror appeared in the 19th century.
Although his figures are devoid of any psychological emotion due to their stylization, their unique color, Carlos Amorales succeeds in reintroducing feelings or sensations, thanks to the staging of his works from which very often emerge a tension, a feeling of anguish.
Since the end of the 1990s, Carlos Amorales has been present on the international art scene. Solo exhibitions: Museo Amparo, Puebla, Mexico City, Cornerhouse, Manchester, Kurimanzutto Gallery, Mexico City (2010), Kunsthalle Freddericianum, Kassel, Espacio de Arte Veronicas Murcia (2009), Philadlelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia (2008), Yvon Lambert Gallery, New York (2006). Group exhibition: Still / Moving, The Israel Museum, Tel Aviv (2010), The Metamorphosis-International Contemporary Art Exhibition, Other Gallery Shangai Space, (2010), A Certain State of the World, Garage, Moscow (2009), 10th Havana Biennial (2009), This is Sculpture, Tate Liverpool, (2009) Escultura Social: A New Generation of Art from Mexico City, Museum of Contemporary Art, chicago. (2007).
During his residency Carlos Amorales exhibited from 2 to 31 March 2012 at the Galerie Yvon Lambert in Paris.
Film, Carlos Amorales "Drumming"