Carlos Amorales completed his artistic training in Europe in the 1990s, at the Rijksakademie in Amsterdam. His work grows primarily out of his interest in performance and drawing, which has led him to create the animation pieces for which he is internationally known on the contemporary art scene. Amorales has used various media over his career to explore the meanings of language, transforming it into symbols and graphic representations, and raising questions about its usefulness, limitations and meanings. His Liquid Archive, a database created by reviewing digital drawings produced over a ten-year period, reflects the need to make these drawings come alive in his work. The artist used animation techniques to set them in motion in his first piece to be projected on a dual screen, which was presented at the Casa de América in Madrid in 2005. The following year he presented Useless Wonder in the Unlimited section of Art Basel. The animation piece consists of two parts: one side displays a map of the world that slowly breaks up and coalesces again, serving as a symbol of our global age. On the other side, the artist’s obsessions multiply: we see the beast-man, the monkey-woman, flocks of birds, wolves, skulls, blood that seems to soak the screen, etc. The atmosphere is heightened by a soundtrack created especially for the piece by Silverio (Julián Lede), a Mexican musician who has collaborated on other pieces with Amorales. Fantasies and myths silhouetted in black feature prominently in the work produced by the artist during this period, which extends over seven years in the form of hallucinatory works drawn from his immense database, the Liquid Archive, whose meanings lead us on an exploration of the individual and collective subconscious. The rational, the unpredictable, fear and beauty are key concepts for interpreting his work.