Balbone Martinez: Speaking in Parables Will Get You Nowhere With This Crowd

Jan. 23 – May 23, 2010
Opening Reception: Fri., Jan. 22, 6-9 pm

Balbone Martinez is a collaborative project by Michael Balbone and Emily Martinez. There is not one defining aesthetic throughout the Balbone Martinez collaboration. The methodology of their work is primarily based upon recycling trash and found imagery. For the most part, they like working somewhere between the world of fine arts and contemporary culture and between the world of handmade craft and consumerism.

Some of the themes the artists keep in rotation are: alienation from post industrial society, the identity of images in the public realm, literal interpretation of a medium, causal relationships of images, artwork defined by its own medium, fine art versus product marketing, the idea of democracy, socio/economic/political mythologies, the statistics game, and the concept of salvation in art.

Their latest installations consist of two-dimensional found objects, decorative items, and re-contextualized information portrayed in a schizophrenic carnival aesthetic. This commonplace imagery and disembodied data is reassembled into new information / disinformation / misinformation. Interpretations are guided, misguided, secretly hinted at, but never strictly enforced.

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Funding Acknowledgements

The Art and Culture Center of Hollywood is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization supported in part by its members, admissions, private entities, the City of Hollywood, the Broward County Board of County Commissioners as recommended by the Broward Cultural Council; the State of Florida, Department of State, Division of Cultural Affairs, the Florida Council on Arts and Culture; and the Kresge Foundation. We welcome donations from all members of the community who wish to support our work.