Museum Fridericianum
Dates: 5 Dec 09 - 14 Feb 10
Categories: Contemporary (1970-present) Latin American
Address: Friedrichsplatz 18 Kassel d-34117
Tel: +49 (0)561 70 72 720 Website
This large-scale exhibition presents an overview of Mexican-born artist Carlos Amorales’ “Nuevos Ricos” project, which refers to the rapid profits made in the 1970s Mexican music and art businesses. Nuevos Ricos is the name of the record label Amorales founded in 2003 with Mexican musician Julian Léde. The label combines art and music performances that critically address issues of franchising and piracy. “This elaborate oeuvre is completed now, giving way for a rich retrospective,” says curator Rein Wolfs. Throughout five rooms, photographs, videos, performances and installations illustrate the artist’s “concern with the relation of art and commerce, the proliferation in art, and the underlying economic factors,” adds Wolfs. The first room documents concert performances by Amorales, displaying photographs, videos and texts. A second space will be covered with motifs and extracts from the artist’s “Liquid Archive”, a creative source of images and texts, which he began collecting in 1999. The archive forms a central part of Amorales’ work, containing his red and black letters as well as templates often depicting frightening nocturnal scenes. A specially built concert room will stage live performances by Amorales and Léde on the show’s opening night as “his main focus is to establish a link to the real world in his art”, says the curator. This is especially the case with the two “shops” on display, which occupy the final two rooms of the exhibition. While Amorales presents a Nuevo Ricos Franchise shop, two Colombian artists will show a “copied” shop, called the Nuevos Ricos Franchise Pirate. “Amorales critically deals with the notion of copying and piracy but also points out the positive and continuative aspects of the proliferation of art,” notes Wolfs. The highlight of the show is Amorales’s site-specific installation for the museum’s rotunda. A 20-metre wide mural contemplates the process of duplication, depicting silhouettes of hundreds of black wolves running on a red and white background (example pictured). Josi von Perfall
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