CONTEMPORARY ARTS CENTER PRESENTS SOLO EXHIBITION OF MEXICO CITY ARTIST CARLOS AMORALES
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTEMPORARY ARTS CENTER PRESENTS SOLO EXHIBITION OF MEXICO CITY ARTIST CARLOS AMORALES
Carlos Amorales: Discarded Spider features new drawings, films and the first comprehensive catalog of Amorales’s work, as well as a Cincinnati Ballet performance in response to his work
CINCINNATI—The Contemporary Arts Center is pleased to present Carlos Amorales: Discarded Spider, a solo exhibition by one of Mexicos most innovative contemporary artists. The exhibition is curated by Raphaela Platow and features Amoraless recent vector-graphic drawings, animated videos, paintings and sculptures. Discarded Spider opens September 27, 2008 with an Opening Reception Friday, September 26 at 7 pm and remains on view through March 8, 2009 in the Lois & Richard Rosenthal Center for Contemporary Art. A catalog produced by CAC accompanies the exhibition.
This exhibition will, for the first time, bring together all of Carlos Amoraless different artistic pursuits in a unique and poignant way, says Platow, the Alice & Harris Weston Director and Chief Curator.
Amorales has developed an installation in response to Zaha Hadids architectural design for the buildings gallery spaces, using drawings of spider webs from his vast, digital archive to build four sculptural forms.
Amorales is recognized for his sculptures, performances, costumes, masks and narrative, animated films by drawing from his Liquid Archive, his vast collection of synthesized drawings of birds, spider webs, trees, airplanes, hybrid creatures and skulls, and hundreds of images. Amorales uses these images as building materials in creating his animated films, sculptures and costumes. I understand (the Liquid Archive) better as my tool than as a work of art in itself, Amorales says in a 2007 interview for the catalog accompanying his solo exhibition with Daro Exhibitions in Zurich, Dark Mirror.
The Liquid Archive has evolved into a vocabulary, a growing language of iconography. Im interested above all in creating the language and afterwards creating the possibilities for the language to express itself, he says. Using the Archive is a phantasmagorical way of drawing. All these drawings exist digitally, and can be transposed in another specific medium.
Most of Amoraless work is based on drawings that then morph into other media such as sculptures, sound works or videos. For the performance Amorales is developing for the CAC, he brings the body to the drawing to continuously manipulate and transform it, Platow states.
Amorales is fascinated with the theme of horror both as a film genre and as a human emotion. In his work, he utilizes themes, images and music to activate what he sees as the paradox of beauty and terror in the popular imagination. I couldnt give you a perfect definition of what beauty is to me, but I think that its that moment of contradiction that an image can have, of absolute seduction and absolute repulsion. Its like a moment of vibration, he says.
The CAC is producing a catalog to be published in the fall, which will be Amoraless first catalog printed in the US and the most comprehensive publication of his work to date. The catalog includes essays by Nestor Garcia Canclini, Jose Falconi, Jens Hoffmann, Joan Jonas (in conversation) and Raphaela Platow.
Mexico City-based artist Carlos Amorales (1970) works in a range of media including drawing, film, sculpture and performance inspired by a fantasy aesthetic of beauty and terror. His early works featured masked Mexican wrestlers performing in wrestling rings throughout the world, including at the Tate Modern in London and the Pompidou Center in Paris. 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, and MUCA in Mexico City. The artist's work is featured in many public and private collections, including the MoMA in New York, La Coleccin Jumex in Mexico City, the Cisneros Foundation Collection in New York, the Margulies Collection in Miami and the Irish Museum of Modern Art in Dublin.
The son of two Mexican artists, Amorales shares his given name with his father, Carlos Aguirre. To distinguish himself and his work from his fathers, Amorales took his mothers maiden name, Morales, and added the initial A from his fathers name. This new pseudonym, Amorales says, becomes its own creation, part of a career and lifestyle of creative expression.
About the Contemporary Arts Center
Founded in November 1939 as the Modern Art Society by three visionary women in Cincinnati, Contemporary Arts Center was one of the first institutions in the U.S. dedicated to exhibiting the art of our time. In May 2003, the Center relocated to its first free-standing home, the Lois & Richard Rosenthal Center for Contemporary Art, designed by Zaha Hadid. Throughout its distinguished history, the Center has earned a reputation for stimulating thought and introducing new ideas by presenting the work of diverse artists from around the world, including hundreds of now-famous artists such as Laurie Anderson, Jasper Johns, Louise Nevelson, Nam June Paik, I.M. Pei, Pablo Picasso, Robert Rauschenberg, Kara Walker and Andy Warhol. CAC focuses on new developments in painting, sculpture, photography, architecture, performance art and new media, presenting eight to 12 exhibitions and 20 to 40 performances annually.
The CAC receives ongoing support from: Fine Arts Fund; Ohio Arts Council; City of Cincinnati; The Carol Ann and Ralph V. Haile, Jr./U.S. Bank Foundation, City of Cincinnati Arts Grant Recipient.; The Kettering Fund; and the generous contributions and grants of individuals and corporations and foundations, CAC memberships, facility rentals, special events and sales from the CAC Store.
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