A painter, photographer, and mixed-media artist, Carlos Betancourt and his seminal studio, Imperfect Utopia, are credited with helping to launch the Miami art scene in the 1990s.
Mixed-media artist Carlos Betancourt and his influential studio, Imperfect Utopia, helped to launch the Miami art scene in the 1980's. Betancourt's oeuvre
is a lush explosion of radiant, eccentric colors in which he explores the kaleidoscope (multi-racial, multi-lingual, trans-cultural) of Caribbean and American culture. His work alludes to issues of memory, beauty, identity, and communication. He bends the lines between art, photography, and nature in his photographs, collages, painting, installations, and conceptual pieces.
Carlos Betancourt's imagery reinterprets the past and present and offers it in a fresh context. He is inspired by Puerto Rico, Miami, and his extensive travels; also artist Ana Mendieta's interventions in nature, Robert Rauschenberg's assemblages, Andy Warhol's perceptions, Neo Rauch compositions, and a Federico Fellini-esque cast of characters for his photo assemblages.
This exuberant volume explores Betancourt's body of work, with more than 250 images and texts by art critic Paul Laster, art history professor Robert Farris Thompson and United States Inaugural Poet, Richard Blanco.
His artwork is included in the permanent collections of various museums, including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The National Portrait Gallery, and The Smithsonian Institute.
"[Carlos Betancourt] bends the lines between art, photography, and nature in his photographs, collages, painting, installations, and conceptual pieces. Betancourt's imagery reinterprets the past and present and offers it in a new context. . . This exuberant volume explores Betancourt's body of work, with more than 250 images and texts..."
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VENÜ MAGAZINE"
Don't let the title fool you - there's nothing imperfect about this volume. . . Included are more than 250 images of Betancourt's vast oeuvre, which heavily focuses on blurring the lines between and experimenting with imagery, fine art, and nature, as well as exploring themes of memory, beauty, identity, and communication.
If you like the glitz of Warhol mixed with the sharper aesthetic of Rauschenberg, you'll enjoy his work, and this tome that draws its title from the name of Betancourt's studio,
Imperfect Utopia."
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INTERVIEW MAGAZINE
This exuberant volume explores Carlos's 25-year-old career with more than 250 images and texts. . . Everything in Carlos's work is rooted in the idea of memories, beauty and nature. Consummate dexterity in
many different mediums including photography, collage, painting, assemblage and sculpture have allowed Carlos to develop his very own visual language which is as vast as the amount of colors, symbols and materials that he uses."
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THE HUFFINGTON POST
