In ‘Orgy of Narcissus’, Amorales examines the contemporary cultural phenomenon of “memes”, which circulate through the Internet in the form of images or video clips. As a result, their meaning can quickly change and become completely incomprehensible to outsiders. He made ‘Orgy of Narcissus’ especially for the exhibition ‘Carlos Amorales - The Factory’, which took place in the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam in 2019-2020.
As part of his first European retrospective exhibition ‘Carlos Amorales – The Factory,’ Amorales created sixty tapestries called ‘Orgy of Narcissus’, which covered all four walls of one of the rooms in the show. The colourful panels tell the story of a character who seems to be imprisoned in a narcissistic orgy of greedy clones of himself. At first glance, the character may appear to be enjoying himself, but on closer inspection it starts looking more like a bizarre nightmare than a pleasurable orgy. In this work, Amorales investigates the contemporary cultural phenomenon of “memes” and their quick spread and ever changing meaning. The way in which memes and biological viruses multiply is very similar, and there are also parallels in the development of gossip and myths: each time the story is told anew, it changes a little, and eventually takes on a life of its own. Topics such as replication, anonymity, and loss of authorship have long been prominent themes in Amorales work, and these themes have grown in importance with the emergence of memes.
Amorales produced sixty designs which first had to be converted and cleaned in a special program and later translated into a weavable file. Subsequently, Amorales delved into the yarn stock to find the right material for his tapestries. Amorales landed on the choice of silk yarns which had to be specially ordered in the right colours. Silk yarns are very soft and thin and can give the design an interesting sheen. Regarding the background of the tapestries, Amorales wanted to keep the structure and feeling of paper on which he delivered his sketches and design. Therefore, many sampling and testing took place before arriving at the desired outcome.
Carlos Amorales lives and works in Mexico City. He studied at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam (1992-1995), and later at the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten (1996-1997). Amorales is primarily interested in language and the impossibility/possibility of communicating through unrecognizable or uncodified means such as sounds, gestures, and symbols. He experiments on the borders between image and sign with a wide range of platforms.
