Estudio Amorales

El Estudio por la Ventana

Estudio Amorales — Thu, 28 Mar 2013 18:59:59 +0000

Throwing the Studio Out of the Window

2010

Installation

Pencil on wall, wood, paint.

This installation implies the artists studio space as a reproducible form in itself, rebuild in 1:1 scale inside a gallery, which contains the visual language that defines it. By transforming the digital information into actual objects and inviting 20 artists to overdraw the studio walls, a fragmentation of the figurative visual language

was archived into what resulted as a series of abstract shapes containing bits of those former renderings. The collaborative working process annihilated the Liquid Archive as an artistic resource, transforming it into a source with open meaning.

Herramientas de Trabajo

Herramientas de trabajo, 2010
One channel video projection, 11’ 38”
16mm black and white film without sound, transferred to digital video

Vertical Earthquake & Germinal

Estudio Amorales — Wed, 27 Mar 2013 23:01:21 +0000

Vertical Earthquake
2010
Steel rulers, graphite on wall
Dimensions according to space

Crooked metal rulers where made by following the cracked lines that appeared in the buildings that collapsedin Mexico City’s earthquake in 1985. The rulers hanged from a nail on the wall and then pencil lines where traced to form semi circles made by the repetition of the zigzag patterns. A work that in one hand is a formal study about how a chaotic form becomes organized by its constant appliance, it is as well a reflection about how a moment of social anarchy can be used to become a newer order.

Installation View

Detail of ruler and drawing 01

Detail of ruler and drawing 02

Germinal
2010
Serigraphed journal on paper,
graphite and paint.
53 x 37,5 cm

Newspaper juxtaposing images from Mexico City’s 1985 earthquake and anarchist texts from the last century. This work proposes a reflection on how a two week lapse of spontaneous anarchy was a profoundly influential aftermath for challenging the then official party government in Mexico. The citizen movement that was generated from the catastrophe layered the first steps for a change that took fifteen years to happen, in 2000. Based on pictures of the broken buildings, the newspaper copies where drawn with chaotic pencil lines, as to stain the reader’s fingers.

Installation View

Newspaper Detail 01

Newspaper Detail 02

La lengua de los muertos

Estudio Amorales — Wed, 27 Mar 2013 22:53:04 +0000

“La Lengua de los Muertos”
2012
Photo roman
Silkscreen on paper
37.5 x 57 cm

In the work “La Lengua de Los Muertos” (The Tongue of the Death), a photo roman made by sequencing the extremely cruel images that have continuously appeared in the Mexican media resulting from the war against drugs, an abstract language is proposed as what the death would speak if existing in an afterlife. This work explores an acute feeling of alienation towards our own culture, where the language of war is impossible to rationalize and sense escapes comprehension.

Vagabundo en Francia y Bélgica

Estudio Amorales — Wed, 27 Mar 2013 22:52:35 +0000

Vagabond in France and Belgium

2011

6 posters and silk screened book on paper

Posters: 120 x 180 cm each

Book: 30 x 42 cm

The abstract forms that where previously condensed from the Liquid Archive are explored as typefaces in a series of posters that turn into a booklet. By downscaling the forms into the size of a printable type, the forms began to play ambiguously as they can be perceived like text or image. The forms being alphabetic pictograms, the text is in fact a short story by writer Roberto Bolaño in which he describes his searching for an artist and poet who worked with this sort of asemic writing in Belgium.

Installation View 01

Installation View 02

Detail of Booklet 01

Detail of Booklet 02

Detail of Booklet 03

Detail of Booklet 04

Detail of Booklet 05

Poster View 01

Poster View 02

Poster View 03

Poster View 04

Poster View 05

Poster View 06

The Sorcerer’s Apprentice

Estudio Amorales — Wed, 27 Mar 2013 21:57:55 +0000

El Aprendiz de Brujo, 2013

sinchronized double screen

video projection on wall

without sound

The Sorcerer's Apprentice

Amsterdam

Estudio Amorales — Wed, 27 Mar 2013 20:52:59 +0000

Amsterdam, 2013
Digital film projected on a 3 x 1.7 m screen.
Black and white, with sound.
21 min.

“Amsterdam” is a fictional film made from a screenplay written in collaboration with Argentinian author Reinaldo Laddaga, that researched and used the non semantical languages that where explored in previous works. The obstruction of understandable language allowed for the actors and the director to improvise when shooting the scenes. As spoken language and text became more and more abstracted through the filming process, the actors physical expression became the predominant form of communication. Under these working premisses, the act of filmmaking allows to experience an “state of exception” comparable to a moment of social anarchy. Ultimately “Amsterdam” perhaps can be considered a love story gone strange.

Amsterdam

Screenplay for Amsterdam, 2012-13
100 black and white photocopies
each is 21.5 x 28 cm

The screenplay for the film was made by cutting, collaging and overprinting pictures of the actors, texts, signs and symbols with a photocopy machine. The immediacy of photocopying allowed for a straight forwards method of free-flow image association that was useful for imagining the film.

Screenplay for Amsterdam

005

016

021

044

046

064

078

079

091

093

116

118

162

164

167

169

Orellana’s Fantasia

Estudio Amorales — Wed, 27 Mar 2013 20:31:46 +0000

Orellana’s Fantasia, 2013
Made in collaboration with Julian Lede
Digital film projected on a 3 x 1.7 m screen
With sound

“Orellana’s Fantasia” is a short film that registers the shadows of a performance by Guatemalan contemporary music composer Joaquin Orellana, who created and used a set of musical instruments inspired in xylophones and marimbas after his studies at the Di Tella avant-garde music center, in Buenos Aires, Argentina, by the end of the sixties.

After becoming interested in electronic music and worked with tape loops Orellana returned to his country to discover that he had no more access to the technology and the knowledge that he required to create his music. To continue Orellana build a set of instruments that are analogue models made to perform as if they where electronic instruments. Each instrument has to be performed by following a score written out of a set of symbols and notations that he invented to do so.

Fascinated by Orellana’s unusual take on electronic music, Carlos Amorales and musician Julian Léde commissioned him in 2012 to create his own version of the score for a segment of the classic animation film “Fantasia” by Walt Disney. The filmic registration of the shadows casted on a screen by the instrument’s forms, the notations and the musician became the animation that rounds Orellana’s version.

Orellana’s Fantasia

Views from the studio of Joaquin Orellana, Guatemala City View

Studio View 01

Studio View 02

Studio View 03

Studio View 04

"The Sorcerer's Apprentice" First Test

Video Still from the first version of “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice”

"Orellana's Fantasia" Filming Process

Filming Process 01

Filming Process 02

Filming Process 03

“Orellana’s Fantasia” Filming Process (photo by Elsa-Louise Manceaux)

We’ll See How All Reverberates

Estudio Amorales — Tue, 18 Dec 2012 19:15:47 +0000

Carlos Amorales
“We’ll See How All Reverberates”
2012
Installation of three hanging mobiles with cymbals.
Steel, cooper and epoxy paint.
Approximately 5, 7 and 5 meters diameter.

“We’ll See How All Reverberates”is an installation that is based on the organic shapes of the mobiles made by Alexander Calder. Instead of hanging abstract forms, from the mobiles are suspended about thirty-five different cymbals, the installation thus becoming a musical instrument. The cymbals are meant to be played by the exhibition’s audience and also by musicians. This installation suggests a state of quietness that by being played by an audience can become either harmonic or chaotic.

Installation View 01

Installation View 02

Installation View 03

Installation View 04

Installation View 05

Playing the Cymbals

Carlos Amorales Drumming
Atelier Calder
Filmed by Guillaume Blanc
March 2012

Bienal de Sharjah

We’ll See How All Reverberates
Bienal de Sharjah
Courtyard of Calligraphers’ Studios
Filmed by David Clarebout
March 2013

Bauhaus Reference Picture

“Press the Eject and Give Me the Tape”; Bauhaus, 1982
Photograph by Eugene Merinov

Supprimer, Modifier et Preserver

Estudio Amorales — Thu, 04 Oct 2012 22:19:53 +0000

Supprimer, Modifier et Preserver, 2012
One channel video projection, 28’ 42”
Color, subtitled with sound

An updated version of the French Civil Code was printed with graphite and then given to different lawyers to erase, modify or preserve the laws that each one considered fundamental. The French Civil Code (for long known as the Napoleonic code), enacted in 1804 and considered a product of the French Revolution, has been highly influential in the development of civil codes in much of Europe, South America, Africa and Asia.

“Supprimer, Modifier et Preserver” is a work that deals with and challenges the notion of right as an independent, organic, rational and complete system, as well as how much and to what extend it can be considered an expression of the will of the ‘people’. Given that codes and constitutions are important historical documents influencing society and over determining its values, this work encourages re-thinking the social rules that govern us, individual responsibility within larger political debates, the importance of a sharp division between public and private law and of the making and meaning of such constructs.

Supprimer, Modifier et Preserver

Book Drawing Process

Book Drawing Process Detail

Book Detail 01

Book Detail 02

Book Detail 03

Book Set 01

Book Set 02

"Supprimer, Modifier et Preserver" Video Still 01

Video Still 02

Video Still 03

Video Still 04

"Egypt Independent" Newspaper Publication

A Carlos Amorales film in collaboration with Philippe Eustachon
Image and Installation: Julien Devaux
Sound: Florian Namias

Book Development: Iván Martínez López, Eduardo Berumen Berry, Edgar Torres Bobadilla and Yazmín Hidalgo.

With the participation of Maitre Laurence Apitz, Laura Buffard, Maitre Tabet Koraytem, Nadia Hammami, Maitre Benoit Huret, Laurence Turpin, Maitre Jacques Sentex and Mac/ Val Technician staff.

Special Thanks to Melanie Meffrer Rondeau and Guillaume Benaich from Yvon Lambert Gallery and to all the Mac/ Val team.

MATANGA

Estudio Amorales — Tue, 26 Jun 2012 22:24:49 +0000

Matanga, 2012

Sound based installation
10 player pianos hanging from trees.
Dimensions according to space.

Exhibited in the context of Proyecto Liquido at Fundación Alumnos 47 -a series of performances on the subject of fear- in Mexico City, this sound based installation consisted of ten player pianos that hanged from the garden trees of an abandoned house. For twelve hours the player pianos performed simultaneously a selection of classical music pieces by well known composers such as Beethoven, Chopin, Bach, Tchaikovsky, Ravel and Nancarrow, all blending together into a musical cacophony. During the span of the event the public strolled trough the garden at will and entered into the empty rooms of the house to hear the music from within. Matanga dealt with fear as an atmosphere where what is easily recognizable: a house, a garden, a tree, a piano or a classical melody, becomes certainly uncanny.

Installation view 1

Installation view 2

Installation view 3

Installation view 4

Installation view 5

_{Photos by Cannon Bernáldez, courtesy of Alumnos 47 and the artist.}

_{Produced by Fundación Alumnos47. Curated by Jessica Berlanga Taylor. General coordination by Emiliano García and Marcelo Rangel. Musical coordination by Jazmín Zepeda. Player piano’s restoration, care and installation by Damián Tinajera y Rodrigo Tinajera. Care of trees and vegetation by Juan Rovalo. Video documentation by inboxfilms.tv. Photography by Lorena Alcaraz and Cannon Bernáldez. Audio recording and advice by Ernesto García. Mixer by Omar Durán and Octavio Cazares. Electrical installation by Cooperativa en Producciones Especializadas (COOPE). Logistics by Hermenegildo Cruz, Alejandro Castellano López and César Raúl Aguilar Aguilar. ALIRTEC. Installation assistants: Arturo Flores, Antonio Colorado, Diego Flores and Manuel Valdivia. Cía. de Paisaje + Flores. Plastic covers by Arturo and Armando Ramírez.}

coal drawing machine

Estudio Amorales — Fri, 08 Jun 2012 21:56:26 +0000

Coal Drawing Machine, 2012
Installation: machine, coal, steel, epoxy paint
and paper banners
Variable dimensions

Exhibited for the first time in a former coal mine in Belgium, at Manifesta 9 “The Deep of the Modern”, this paper labyrinth generates from the output by a machine which draws with coal. By making an analogy between the mine’s excavated underground and Hell, the drawings are repetitive patterns of magic symbols that can invoke demons but which also are considered to be the predecessors of the electronic circuits that are in use today. The machine functions through the span of the exhibition, it’s output accumulating day after day. The Coal Drawing Machine, an installation, questions the tension between the hand made quality of the traditional coal drawings and the fact of these being industrially produced by a machine. It is a piece that recalls the myth of robots and machines becoming sensible, as for instance in the novel “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” by Philip K. Dick, later filmed as “Blade Runner”.

Inatallation view

Detail of drawing

Entrance to the labyrinth

The labyrinth is made with 80 banners that hang from the ceiling, subdividing the space. People can cross through the maze, at its end they can find the Coal Drawing Machine.

End side of the labrynth

Banner 01, charcoal on paper, 127 x 320 cm.

Banner 02, charcoal on paper, 127 x 320 cm.

Banner 03, charcoal on paper, 127 x 320 cm.

Banner 04, charcoal on paper, 127 x 320 cm.

Banner 05, charcoal on paper, 127 x 320 cm.

View of the mechanical drawing process

View of the charcoal appliance dispositive.

Ars Goetia seals

The Ars Goetia is the first section of five included in the anonymous 17 th century grimoire “The Lesser Key of Salomon”. There are 72 seals, each representing a demon.

Ars Goetia circuits

It is believed that the structure of the seals is similar to the one of today’s electronic circuits. As the seals are used for evoking demons, which are aspects of human intelligence, this implies that the seals can be understood as a primitive artifical intelligence language.

Example of a common electronic circuit.

Buer demon represented abstractly in the Ars Goetia

This symbol represents the demon called Buer, who teaches Natural and Moral Philisophy, Logic and the virtues of all herbs and plants. He also heals all infirmities, especially of men, and gives good familiars.

Buer demon

as represented in the book “Dictionnaire Infernal”, published by Collin de Plancy in 1818. The image is an etching by M. Jarrualt after a drawing by Louis Breton. This is a figurative rendering of one of the 72 demons contained in the Ars Goetia.

This work was made possible with the support of Manifesta 9, Yvon Lambert Gallery and Kurimanzutto. The drawing device was developed by Eduardo Berumen from Tres Morenos, the metal structure was produced in Tours by Guillaume Blanc/ Atelier Calder and the banners where made by Edgar Torres Bobadilla, Ivan Martinez and Alejandro Mejia Andrade at Estudio Amorales. Carlos Amorales wishes to thank Cuauhtemoc Medina, Thomas Engelbert and Mieke Mels and as well Axel Velazquez for introducing him to the occult knowledge of the Ars Goetia.

Films and Animations 1997 – 2010

Estudio Amorales — Sat, 12 May 2012 19:05:43 +0000

Amorales Interim

Amorales Interim, 1997
Single-channel video on monitor, ’9″43
color with sound

Amorales vs Amorales (My Way)

Amorales vs Amorales (My Way), 2000
Single-channel video on monitor ’33″30
color with sound

La Hora Nacional

La hora nacional, 2010
One channel video projection, 5’ 59”
16mm color film with sound, transferred to digital video

Black Cloud

Black Cloud (Studio), 2007
One channel video projection, 10’ 23”
16mm black and white film with sound, transferred to video

Dark Mirror

Dark Mirror, 2005, Animation
Two cannel video projection on floating screen, 6’ 28”
Color with sound back screen

Animation by André Pahl, Music by José María Serralde

Manimal

Manimal, 2005, Animation
One channel video projection, 5’ 26”
Black and white with sound

Directed by Carlos Amorales, animation by Iván Martínez López, score by Julián Lede

Psicofonias

Psicofonias, 2008
Installation of b/w two channel channel video conected to a MIDI system,
two floating screens, sound system, unlimited time.

Directed by Carlos Amorales, programing by André Pahl, music concept by Julian Lede

Useless Wonder

Useless Wonder, 2006, Animation
Two channel video projection on floating screen
Front length 8’ 36”, Back length 7’ 51”, Color with sound

Directed by Carlos Amorales, animation by André Pahl, score by Julián Lede

Useless Wonder (back side of screen)

Download Work Documentation (1996-2012)