Hoffmann + Maler + Wallenberg is delighted to announce Money Flies, the inaugural European solo exhibition featuring Colombian artist Adriana Martínez Barón (born 1988, Bogotá). The show includes works in diverse mediums, including sculpture, collage, painting, and a site-specific mural, all created in 2023.

Martínez Barón’s artworks encompass multidimensional narratives, engaging themes that traverse geographical boundaries while intertwining the political and the poetic, the aesthetically pleasing and the emotionally evocative. The featured works range from Cleveland Indians baseball bats acquired through online retailer Amazon and their transformation through the skilled craftsmanship of Indigenous carvers along the Amazon River, to five vintage maps, one each for Europe, the Americas, Asia, Africa, and Australia, embellished with a prominent Instagram Stories image reading “The story is no longer available” atop a backdrop of 90% black coverage, illustrating Instagram as a global phenomenon.

Latin Tears employs small, circular paper dots meticulously perforated from Colombian currency, reminiscent of celebratory confetti, in perhaps a tongue-in-cheek reference to “throwing money around.” These confetti-like elements are housed in small plastic bags evocative of the packaging commonly associated with the street sale of cocaine in Colombia and worldwide. The confetti is available for purchase by weight at a price equivalent to that of the actual drug. By fusing art as an addictive commodity with the ephemeral nature of the confetti experience—momentary joy and excitement that quickly dissipates— Martínez Barón prompts contemplation on the fleeting nature of pleasure.

Another compelling piece, At the End of the Rainbow, employs money as a central material to explore themes of ambivalence and desire. The work features a roll of Latin American bills held together by a rubber band and arranged in ascending order of color, from darkest to brightest. This visual composition again evokes associations of drug trafficking and sales, as similar money rolls are often encountered in the hands of street dealers. And as the artwork is available for purchase, it effectively facilitates a transaction that involves exchanging one form of money for another. Notably, the work’s price is set at twice the value of the bills employed in its creation. The title alludes to the mythical notion of a treasure awaiting discovery, inviting contemplation on the yearning for material wealth and the illusory belief in its effortless attainment.

The centerpiece of the exhibition is an expansive mural titled Prophecy: Águila, Quetzal, Condor, which draws inspiration from a Native American legend about three avian creatures—the eagle, the quetzal, and the condor. Symbolically, the eagle represents North America, the quetzal represents Central America, and the condor represents South America. According to the myth, these birds will eventually converge, and the Indigenous peoples of the Americas will finally experience freedom, prosperity, equality, and an interconnected continent devoid of borders—an environment where exploration knows no limitations, just as the birds soar unhindered across frontiers.