Press Release

NEW ORLEANS---Heriard-Cimino Gallery presents About the Archaic Substance, a recent series of photographs and installation by Carlos Betancourt.  A reception to meet the artist will be held on Saturday, May 7, 2005 from 6 to 9 p.m.   The public is invited.  The exhibition will be on view from May 1 through 31, 2005.  Gallery hours are Tuesday through Friday 10:30 to 5:30, and Saturday 10 to 5, or by appointment.

The Exhibition: Carlos Betancourt's large-scale photographs explore his origins going back to pre-Columbian and Afro-Caribbean cultures and the connection of signs, symbols and arcane text, adorned and animated onto the human body. Denise M. Gerson discusses in her essay on Betancourt for the Lowe Art Museum: This is the stuff of tribal fetishes, of potent accretions wielded by shamans and medicine men.  It is a world Betancourt celebrates...so as to imbue his art with the magical power and spiritual essence of the African, Afro-Caribbean, and Taino cultures he so admires.  Betancourt's fascination with markings and myths is echoed in his personalized graffiti inspired from tribal sources, and his own imagination, dusting, sprinkling, scattering, smudging and painting his subjects.  The elements he uses possess symbolic significance (glitter substitutes for falling stars of African myths.)  His markings suggest ritualistic scarification and tattooing related to tribal concepts of beautification and protection. Also in the exhibition is an installation honoring his grandmother with objects commemorating her life - drenched in blue glitter, and set upon soil.

The Artist: Carlos Betancourt was born and raised in San Juan, Puerto Rico of Cuban parents, and has lived in Miami since 1981. His celebrated career in Miami has now extended to New York, Spain, Italy, Argentina, the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico and Mexico City. His work can be found at the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Centro Atlantico de Arte Moderno in the Canary Islands, the Museo de Arte Moderno in Santo Domingo, and the Bass Museum in Miami. This will be Carlos Betancourt's first exhibition at Heriard-Cimino Gallery.