CURATION AND MUSEOGRAPHY: Carlos Amorales and Cuauhtémoc Medina

This exhibition reviews over two decades of work by one of Mexico’s most internationally recognized contemporary artists, Carlos Amorales (b. 1970), highlighting how his oeuvre is structured as an organic investigation despite its multifaceted expression. It is an unconventional retrospective conceived equally from images and texts, presenting a narrative that is not fixed and that is enriched by the interpretation of the viewer.

Amorales emphasizes the film/installation binomial in his work; the graphic aspect takes a secondary role, related instead to the creation of narrative structures (scripts) that function as tools to implement the Axioms.

Following his participation in the Venice Biennale, Amorales wrote the essay Axioms for Action, gathering the principles that constitute the conceptual framework of his work spanning more than 20 years. These are not theories about his art but rather the ideas that govern it, developed through an organic process of research.

The Axioms are organized into four thematic cores and include works in video, animation, and film, as well as graphic works and sound installations. Featured in the exhibition are pieces such as the complete project La vida en los pliegues (2017), presented at the Mexican Pavilion at the Venice Biennale; Negative Nature (Studio) (2012–2018); the large-scale installation of over 40,000 butterflies, Black Cloud (2017); and the video Las masas (2017) from the Cyclops Concert with Philippe Eustachon and Enrique Arriaga at Cabaret Voltaire in Zürich, among others.

Organized by the Museo Universitario de Arte Contemporáneo (MUAC), Axioms for Action was exhibited at MARCO starting March 8 in Galleries 1 to 4.