Carlos Amorales: Backdrop for Ghosts

Nils Stærk is proud to present the first solo exhibition by the Mexican artist Carlos Amorales.

The exhibition Backdrops for ghosts will contain a series of new three-dimensional paintings with silkscreen ink on wooden panels, an installation of maquettes previously used for the artist’s film The Cursed Village shown at the 57th Venice Biennale and site-specific shadow paintings directly on the walls of the gallery space. Amorales’ work is interdisciplinary where the limits and coherence of art and society are explored in relation to language and the individual.

In 2017 Amorales represented Mexico at the Venice Biennale with the project Life in The Folds – a project that created new vocabularies, languages and settings through which life can reinvent itself. Starting out with paper cut-out shapes, Amorales created a series of abstract colorful collages – these abstractions became an illegible alphabet and a series of musical instruments that gave sound to each letter. All aspects were combined in the production of the puppet film The Cursed Village – a film telling the story of an immigrant family, whose destiny ends with being lynched in the foreign town. The maquettes from the film are placed as the central installation in the gallery and allow the viewer to become immersed in a fairytale world, that nevertheless points to urgent political issues.