For his first solo show at kurimanzutto, Carlos Amorales proposes a life-size (1:1) reconstruction of his first studio in Mexico City: an apartment where Amorales started doing animation, installations and designs, in a collective effort with a team of collaborators.

The workspace was established in 2005 in order to make the animation Manimal. Since then, other animations made changed the studio’s dynamic: it went from being a mere workspace to a place of research and experimentation, under Amorales’s leadership. The studio’s members are Edgar Torres Bobadilla, Iván Martínez López, Alba Martínez Lozan, Eduardo Berumen Berry and Lucía Álvarez y Álvarez. The work displayed at kurimanzutto conserves this collective character.

Since the year 2000, Carlos Amorales has developed a series of digital drawings that he uses to compose his work. This instrument, known as the “Liquid Archive”, will be manipulated by the artist and his collaborators to draw over the studio’s architectural reproduction. Thus, the archive’s imagery—projected onto the gallery’s walls—acquires a new level of meaning.

With this exhibition, Amorales broaches a discussion about the “Studio” as a metaphor for the artist’s mind. He also displays a different way of making art that transcends typical forms of conceiving finished work. According to Amorales, the interesting thing is that anyone manipulating his instrument (the “Liquid Archive”) can reinterpret the archival images and expand their iconographic meaning. This is the archive’s potential, as well as the potential of the graphic work that is generated based upon it.

Carlos Amorales (Mexico City, 1970)

Among his many solo exhibitions, some of the most enhancing are “Carlos Amorales y Nuevos Ricos”, Kunsthalle Fridericianum (Kassel, 2009-10);”Discarded Spider”, Cincinnati Art Center y Orange County Museum (USA, 2008-09); “Four Animations, Five Drawings and a Plague”, Philadelphia Art Museum (USA, 2008), “Dark Mirror”, Daros Latinamerica (Zurich 2007); “Carlos Amorales”, MALBA (Buenos Aires, 2006); “Why Fear the Future?”, Casa de America (Madrid, 2005) and MUCA Campus (Mexico City, 2006); “Amorales vs. Amorales”, Challenge 2003, Tate Modern, (London ,2003). He has also been part of several group exhibitions, as well as part of various biennials such as 10 Bienal de La Habana (Cuba 2009); Performa (New York, 2007); 2nd Berlin Biennale (2001) and La Biennale di Venezia, representing The Netherlands (2003), among others.

His work is part of important collections as Tate Modern (London), The Museum of Modern Art (New York), Daros-Latinoamerica (Zurich), Walker Art Center (Minneapolis), Museum Boijmaans van Beunigen (Rotterdam) and Fundación/Colección Jumex (Mexico), among others.

Since 2008 he is tutor of the Rijksakademie van BeeldenKunsten (Amsterdam), and member of the National System of Art Creators (Mexico).