Destruction of the Cities (2016-2023)

In the Destruction of the Cities series, Carlos Amado constructs a visual reflection on ruin as a metaphor for the human condition and the city as a vulnerable body, crossed by time, violence and oblivion. Developed over the last few years, this work takes a close look at the destruction of cities as physical spaces and symbolic entities, caused by contemporary conflicts - from Syria to Afghanistan, from Palmyra to Ukraine - forging a bridge between ancient myths and current tragedies.

The work arises from the confrontation with the media image - photographs, videos and reports, which the artist subjects to a process of reinterpretation through drawing, painting, engraving and installation. The creative process articulates architectural structures such as columns, rose windows and capitals - remnants of order - with meshes, rubble and visual fragments where chance and gesture lead to a poetics of ruin.

The orthogonal networks function simultaneously as a constructive structure and a containment field, echoing both the pixels of the digital image and the skeletons of devastated buildings.

The choice of an austere palette and the deliberate absence of the human figure emphasise a visual silence that is not emptiness, but an interval - a place of suspension. Through this series, Carlos Amado does not seek the literal representation of destruction, but its symbolic translation - where ruin and chaos are transformed into overwhelming and poetic language.

In this process, the artist summons not only the memory of cities, but also the persistence of barbarism, questioning the place of art in the face of collective pain. The Destruction of the Cities thus presents itself as a territory of tension between testimony and sublimation, between what has been lost and what remains. At a time when horror is trivialised by media consumption, these works confront us with a dialectic between reality and fiction.