El Milagro de tus Ojos, solo exhibit, 2023: Solo exhibition, artist residency and student workshop, Fundacion Careyes, Careyes Art Gallery

Exhibit essay by Tere Iturralde 

Carlos Betancourt:  A Collector of Memories. 

To know Carlos Betancourt is to know his passion for life, for Alberto, for his friends & family, for traveling, for nature, for music, art and architecture.  Carlos is a powerful communicator and creator because he is totally present wherever he is.   He fully enjoys the moment, focused on what he is doing, conscious and aware which allow him to be and to flow with what is. 

Born in Puerto Rico and based in Miami since the 1980's, Carlos loves to spend time in Mykonos, Puerto Rico & Careyes where he is constantly creating and collecting memories and objects that he then incorporates into his artwork.  Colors, textures, forms, materials, sounds, all intertwined to share the different layers of his discoveries and experiences, of different cultures as he observes, integrates and creates, telling us a story, his story.    

El Milagro de tus Ojos, 2023.  

The beautiful ballad “El milagros de tus ojos” (The Miracle of your Eyes), composed by Donald Clifton McCluskey, an Argentine musician in 1967 and adapted by many mariachi bands is a favorite of Carlos and the title not only of this exhibition but of the wonderful piece hanging at the entrance of the gallery.  Ribbons of color rain down on all who enter the space, as if crossing over into his world, a world of magic, of miracles, of memories, of color and of love.  

“From the Aegean with Love:  Agape, 2023” and one of the totems from the series “Hopeful Forest”, made in Miami, Mykonos and Careyes welcome us once inside the gallery. Both these series are made of collected items some found, others kept from travels, drawn, collaged or incorporated and all connected to his memories of the places and the people he loves.  The fact that Carlos named the series of works on paper Agape, a Greek word for the most profound love, inspires one to look closer at each detail on the paper thru the lens of that immense feeling, almost indescribable, of connection with the place, the person, the object or the moment (and always under the ribbons of color raining down).  

Careyes, this magical place where we become one with nature is found everywhere in the main room of the gallery.  The wooden ladder connecting the ground to the cosmos, a clear homage to Gian Franco Brignone and his Tigre del Mar, is placed across from the overflowing tower of plastic floats from Perula.  The contrast and connection of both places, the materials: wood and plastic, natural vs synthetic, the memories of our childhood connected to the belief or perhaps hope of being eternal. The mystical and the mundane, all become part of one single experience, one journey of self-discovery that Carlos inspires us to take.

And finally, the series of mono prints titled Beautiful Heavens on the walls, asking to be discovered.  Throughout the years, Carlos has taken photographs of homes, corners, pools, windows & stairs that all of us Careyenses easily recognize.  By intervening them with colors and objects he once again reminds us of our own individual memories and stories of these places and the love we all have for Careyes and for Mexico, its colors, its magic, its music and its people. 

Tere Iturralde

Careyes, Mexico

November 2023