Carlos Amorales: Working Tools. Museo de Arte Moderno de Medellin

A significant portion of Amorales' work is based on the Liquid Archive (1998-2010), a repository of around 4,000 vector drawings that the artist created from silhouettes of personal photographs, artistic documentation, and images found on the Internet, among other sources. The artist generated these vector images as content for animations, some of which are displayed in Room A, and also used them to create graphics, paintings, and sculptures, some of which are present in Room B. He envisioned this image archive as an open-source tool to be used in diverse ways within art and culture.

Another project emerging from this archive is Work Tools (2010), a film in which a series of flat plastic figures, with both animal and human shapes, are intermittently thrown together into the camera’s frame, suggesting visual narratives dictated by chance. These shapes were materialized as drawing tools (graduated like squares or rulers), and Amorales also used them in other works present in the exhibition, highlighting the unifying nature of this piece. This work, which gives the exhibition its title, summarizes the derivative process that characterizes Amorales' practice: from the artist’s photographs came the Liquid Archive; from that, the drawing tools; and from those tools, the film, and so on.

Through the lens of derivation, the works included in the exhibition are not just finished pieces; they become tools that allow for new works and processes. Carlos Amorales. Work Tools is displayed in Rooms A, B, and the Foundry Room at MAMM and is divided into three sections, grouping three of the artist's major interests: moving images, static images, and music in the Foundry Room. Without being a retrospective, the exhibition aims to showcase the varied and prolific career of the artist, as well as the elements that give it cohesion.