Toilet paper, bedposts, chairs, birds, house plants, dominos: the more you consume of Angel Otero’s work, the more there is to unearth.
Over the past decade, the New York-based Puerto Rican artist has concocted his own, distinctive take on abstraction, one which fuses the personal with art historical, and invites the viewer to dive in.
In his forthcoming show at Lehmann Maupin New York, Otero is turning his attention to the home in a series of abstract paintings imprinted with domesticity and childhood memory.
Angel Otero in his studio, 2020.
The artist is perhaps best known for his innovative paint ‘skin’ invention, whereby he layers his image composites atop plexiglass, peels the drying paint off in one sheet, and drapes the oil-paint membrane onto a canvas. In ‘The Fortune of Having Been There’, Otero paints directly onto his skins and puts his distinctive spin on the more familiar route of paint to blank canvas.
In these new paintings, collaged in construction, and wildly gestural in execution, domestic objects appear to levitate in a melodrama of frenzied hues. Carrying the depth and acuity of a true materialist, Otero’s paintings invite as much scrutiny of medium as subject. Jarring and fantastical, they reflect the imprecision and distortion of memory, while anchoring the paintings in a specific time and place. For Otero, that place is his grandmother’s house in Puerto Rico, depicted through fragmented domestic objects that have become repositories of the artist’s personal history.
Above: Angel Otero, Lucky Mirror, 2020. Below: Lucky Mirror, 2020 (detail).
Beyond introspective, Otero’s paintings are odes to his Abstract Expressionist predecessors, and they all feel within reach: the dynamism of Willem de Kooning, the lashings of Jackson Pollock and the electric shards of Joan Mitchell.
Though these memory-infused chronicles may live in the past, Otero’s paintings hold contemporary significance in an age when the intimacy and fundamentals of domestic space feel increasingly close to home.
Angel Otero, Untitled, 2020.
Angel Otero, Untitled, 2020.
INFORMATION
Angel Otero, 'The Fortune of Having Been There', 28 January - March 27, 2021, Lehmann Maupin, New York. lehmannmaupin.com
ADDRESS
501 W 24th St
New York, NY 10011
-
Venerable British car-maker AC goes OTT with the high-output, low-slung AC GT SuperSportPitched at all-American fans of the original AC Cobra, the GT SuperSport is a fearsome two-seat roadster with more muscle than ever before
-
The dynamic young gallerists reinvigorating America's art scene'Hugging has replaced air kissing' in this new wave of galleries with craft and community at their core
-
Out of office: the Wallpaper* editors’ picks of the weekWhile a few of our editors were in Europe for various showcases and launches, others stayed local, uncovering new cuisines, eccentric exhibitions and glorious gardens this side of the Channel
-
The dynamic young gallerists reinvigorating America's art scene
'Hugging has replaced air kissing' in this new wave of galleries with craft and community at their core
-
Meet the New York-based artists destabilising the boundaries of societyA new show in London presents seven young New York-based artists who are pushing against the borders between refined aesthetics and primal materiality
-
After decades capturing the world’s fashion-set, photographer Johnny Rozsa picks up a paint brushIn his first exhibition of paintings, the New York-based artist celebrates the vibrancy of Tangier while rediscovering a familiar creative outlet
-
Leila Bartell’s cloudscapes are breezily distorted, a response to an evermore digital world‘Memory Fields’ is the London-based artist’s solo exhibition at Tristan Hoare Gallery (until 25 July 2025)
-
‘Her pictures looked like pictures everybody knew were the truth’: Diane Arbus at the ArmoryMatthieu Humery curates more than 400 of Arbus’ photographs at New York’s Park Avenue Armory – every picture she was known to have printed
-
Marlene Dumas’ charged, exposed and intimate figures gather in AthensThe artist’s work from 1992 until the present day goes on show at Athens’ Museum of Cycladic Art (until 2 November)
-
Mystic, feminine and erotic: the power of Penny Slinger’s bodies as landscapeArtist Penny Slinger continues her exploration of the sacred, surreal feminine in a Santa Monica exhibition, ‘Meeting at the Horizon’
-
Get lost in Megan Rooney’s abstract, emotional paintingsThe artist finds worlds in yellow and blue at Thaddaeus Ropac London
