Carlos Amorales 2011 in his studio in Mexico City
|Known for||Performance art, Animation, Painting, Drawing, Sculpture|
Carlos Amorales was born in 1970 in Mexico City. Amorales studied at the Gerrit Rietveld Academy and the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam from 1992 to 1996. He is married to the performance artist Galia Eibenschutz.
Amorales works in a variety of media, including video, animation, painting, drawing, sculpture, and performance. Much of his work examines contemporary Mexican culture and values.
Since 1998, Amorales has been building his "Liquid Archive", a digital database of his drawings in the form of vector graphics which he uses produce visual compositions in various media. The graphics, birds, spiders, trees, kneeling figures in blacks, reds, and grays reappear throughout his work and provide his signature style. In 2007, Amorales lent his "Liquid Archive" to the Dutch graphic design duo Mevis & Van Deursen (Armand Mevis and Linda van Deursen) who collaborated with Amorales to produce the book "Carlos Amorales: Liquid Archive, Why Fear The Future".
His early works also featured masked Mexican wrestlers inspired by the Lucha libre performing in wrestling rings throughout the world. In 2003, the wrestling performance Amorales v. Amorales was staged at the Tate Modern in London, the Pompidou Center in Paris and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. His animation piece, Useless Wonder (2006) was shown at the Miami Basel art fair. Recently, Amorales has had solo exhibitions at the MALBA in Buenos Aires, the Milton Keynes Gallery in Milton Keynes UK, Yvon Lambert Paris, the MUCA in Mexico City, the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
In 2015, his work Triangle Constellation was installed in the Calderwood courtyard of the Harvard University Art Museums.
Amorales has exhibited in many solo and group exhibitions, including:
Select solo exhibitions
- Germinal, Museo Rufino Tamayo, Mexico City (2013)
- Four Animations, Five Drawings, and a Plague, Philadelphia Museum of Art (2008)
Select group exhibitions
- 50th Venice Biennale, Dutch Pavilion (2003)
- PERFORMA07, New York (2007)
- Martian Museum of Terrestrial Art, Barbican Centre (2008)
- Manifesta 9 (2012)
- Sharjah Biennial 11 (2013)
- Liverpool Biennial (2014)
The artist's work is featured in many public collections, including:
- MoMA in New York
- La Colección Jumex in Mexico City
- Cisneros Foundation Collection in New York
- Margulies Collection in Miami
- Irish Museum of Modern Art in Dublin
- Philadelphia Museum of Art
- "About the Artist". Philadelphia Museum of Art. Retrieved 2010-07-25.
- "Carlos Amorales Biography", Kurimanzutto Gallery, Retrieved 26 August 2014.
- "Out of space", frieze magazine, Retrieved 26 August 2014.
- "Carlos Amorales: Dark Mirror". Irish Museum of Modern Art. Retrieved 2010-07-25.
- "Philadelphia Museum of Art – Exhibitions". Philadelphia Museum of Art. Retrieved 2010-07-25.
- "Carlos Amorales: Liquid Archive – Why Fear The Future? – Art". Published Art Bookshop. Retrieved 2010-07-25.
- "Amorales vs. Amorales", San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Retrieved 26 August 2014.
- "Cincinnati". Contemporary Arts Center. Retrieved 2010-07-25.
- Nguyen, Sophia. "Harvard Installs "Triangle Constellation"". Harvard Magazine. Retrieved 8 September 2015.
- "Germinal", Tamayo Museum, Retrieved 26 August 2014.
- "Live Cinema/Carlos Amorales: Four Animations, Five Drawings, and a Plague", Philadelphia Museum of Art, Retrieved 26 August 2014.
- "Netherlands: Carlos Amorales", Venice Biennale, Retrieved 26 August 2014.
- "Performa07 Artists", Performa, Retrieved 26 August 2014.
- "Barbican - Martian Museum of Terrestrial Art", Barbican, Retrieved 26 August 2014.
- "Amorales, Carlos", Manifesta 9, Retrieved 26 August 2014.
- "Sharjah Art Foundation - Artists & Participants", Sharjah Art Foundation, Retrieved 26 August 2014.
- "Liverpool Biennial 2014 Artists", Liverpool Biennial, Retrieved 26 August 2014.
- "The Collection: Carlos Amorales", Museum of Modern Art, Retrieved 26 August 2014.
- "Carlos Amorales: Dark Mirror", Irish Museum of Modern Art, Retrieved 26 August 2014.
- "Collections", Philadelphia Museum of Art, Retrieved 24 September 2014.
- "Haber's Art Reviews: Urs Fischer, Carlos Amorales, and Mike Nelson". Haberarts.com. Retrieved 2010-07-25.
- "Kurimanzutto Artists", Kurimanzutto Gallery, Retrieved 1 October 2014.
- Artist website
- Page on Amorales's solo exhibit at the Museum of Latin American Art of Buenos Aires (in Spanish)
- Article from the BBC's "collective" (culture magazine)
- Carlos Amorales in ArtNexus Magazine
- Carlos Amorales at Kunsthalle Fridericianum, Kassel
- "Carlos Amorales", Artnet
- Carlos Amorales at Highpoint Center for Printmaking, Minneapolis
- Carlos Amorales at Kadist Art Foundation