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
-
Johanna Parv’s ‘engineered formalwear’ is made for the woman on the movePart of our monthly series ‘Uprising’, Wallpaper* meets Johanna Parv, the London-based designer whose stealthily beautiful clothes are designed to take women from boardroom to dinner by way of the bike lane
-
Pretty in pink: Mumbai's new residential tower shakes up the cityscape'Satguru’s Rendezvous' in Mumbai houses luxury apartments behind its elegant fluted concrete skin. We take a tour.
-
Federica Biasi is encouraging designers to play through experimentation with her new Kimono tile collectionInspired by Decoratori Bassanesi’s heritage and traditional Japanese fashion, the Kimono tile collection offers a myriad of configurations to transform interiors.
-
Desert X 2025 review: a new American dream grows in the Coachella ValleyWill Jennings reports from the epic California art festival. Here are the highlights
-
This rainbow-coloured flower show was inspired by Luis Barragán's architectureModernism shows off its flowery side at the New York Botanical Garden's annual orchid show.
-
‘Psychedelic art palace’ Meow Wolf is coming to New YorkThe ultimate immersive exhibition, which combines art and theatre in its surreal shows, is opening a seventh outpost in The Seaport neighbourhood
-
Wim Wenders’ photographs of moody Americana capture the themes in the director’s iconic films'Driving without a destination is my greatest passion,' says Wenders. whose new exhibition has opened in New York’s Howard Greenberg Gallery
-
20 years on, ‘The Gates’ makes a digital return to Central ParkThe 2005 installation ‘The Gates’ by Christo and Jeanne-Claude marks its 20th anniversary with a digital comeback, relived through the lens of your phone
-
In ‘The Last Showgirl’, nostalgia is a drug like any otherGia Coppola takes us to Las Vegas after the party has ended in new film starring Pamela Anderson, The Last Showgirl
-
‘American Photography’: centuries-spanning show reveals timely truthsAt the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, Europe’s first major survey of American photography reveals the contradictions and complexities that have long defined this world superpower
-
Tasneem Sarkez's heady mix of kitsch, Arabic and Americana hits LondonArtist Tasneem Sarkez draws on an eclectic range of references for her debut solo show, 'White-Knuckle' at Rose Easton
