Flower Fish

Ecuadorian artist Beto Valencia, better known on social media as Beto Val, began his career in collage almost by accident. Amid the Coronavirus pandemic and from his small studio in Quito, this artist randomly discovers a huge bank of vintage illustrations in the public domain with which he begins to experiment and create his first works, especially as a therapy to combat the stress of his daily life. Soon after, he realizes that his imagination was always full of surreal beings and scenes that needed to come to life, thus he finds the best way to do it through digital collages. Beto Val's collages immerse us in a surreal world plagued by absurd and eccentric beings, who are somehow familiar to us and whose existence is not only possible but necessary. He creates his universe that resists going through a single theme and a single style. His passion is exploration, play, and fun in all its expressions where each new collage suggests a world completely different from the previous one, and yet all of them bear the perfectly recognizable stamp of the author.