Chariots of Humankind

Jim Amaral an exile in art

Jim Amaral has focused on the creation of watercolor and ink drawings, artist books, and a fascinating array of single-edition bronze sculptures. His bronzes have, in recent years, made a departure from human and animal figures towards desolate geometrical landscapes, ashen carts, and timeless machines that appear simultaneously futuristic and archaic, caught in a time beyond death. Mute and undecipherable, these contraptions—these artefacts—inhabit a dimension where movement, time and sound disobey the laws of reality as we know them. Planes shift, cubes resonate, wheels spin, and spheres revolve. With these vehicles, these worlds, at once static and fluid, Amaral questions the preconceptions often imposed upon art and the determinism of science, reminding the spectator that our lives are bound inevitably by the dark mystery of existence. These sculptures, now on display in the exhibition Chariots of Humankind at the Galerie Agnes Monplaisir, present Amaral’s return to Paris after more than thirty years of prolific artistic exploration.

— Valentina Amaral, 2016 [Extracto de texto].