Carlos Betancourt

The Miami based transplant from Puerto Rico helped to usher in the contemporary renaissance of Miami artists known as the “imperfect utopia.” This revitalization hinged on the exploration of medium, identity, and place. For Betancourt’s part, he reinvented the use flash and glitz in his photographic performances, vinyl prints, installations, and found object sculptures. A peek in Betancourt’s toolbox would undoubtedly reveal glitter, poured synthetics, photoshop, and ticker tape, all applied generously to renditions of himself and his close circle of family and friends. 

Featured in this exhibition will be selections from Carlos Betancourt’s “Re-Collections” series: ornamental and organic photographic prints, “The Cut-Out Army”: life-sized prints of his closest relations in various outfits and poses, and a selection of recent works.

In his artistic pursuits Betancourt explores the human desire to document, memorialize, remember or revisit one’s experiences. His fascination with preserving memory leads to an obsession with collecting such things as the Christmas ornaments or sand castle molds closely associated with his childhood. Not content with just a remembering, however, these objects are remade with pageantry and performance, given a sparkling gold patina that softens the edges of youth lost over time.

Nothing of Betancourt’s is typical. Likewise, his photography pushes the boundaries between the pure capture of the lens and the image making in production. What results is an experimental explosion of sensations: lush, radiant, eccentric, and uninhibited. The work is the consequence of Betancourt picking seemingly random objects imbued with vital memories and creating an unapologetically beautiful, strangely ordered, and vibrant assemblage—like memory itself.

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website