Visual & Studio Arts Lecture Series: Angel Otero

Angel Otero was born in 1981 in Santurce, Puerto Rico, where he resided until moving to Chicago

in 2004. He currently splits his time between New York and Puerto Rico. In 2009, Otero was

included in the exhibition ‘Constellations’ at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, shortly

after receiving his MFA at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Otero’s practice is known for employing highly innovative techniques that challenge the parameters

of his materials, revealing the intrinsic qualities of paint. His works are rooted in abstract image

making and engage with ideas of memory through addressing art history, as well as his own lived

experience. Otero is best known for the Oil Skin works he began in 2010, an ongoing series that

demonstrates the inherently transformative nature of the artist’s practice as well as his dedication

to expanding the visual field of abstract expressionism. Using oil paint layered onto glass and

peeled off at a partially dried state, Otero recomposes his ‘skins’ onto canvas to make entirely new

images and patterns. This methodical process is extended to his Transfer Series (2013) which

utilizes imagery from his own personal history. Referencing historical etchings, the artist traces

images drawn from his family photographs into horizontal lines with silicone – he eventually

transfers the composition onto a large piece of paper that becomes the plate he will cover in raw

pigment. Otero then lays his canvas onto these mediums to create a distorted monotype of the

original imagery.

His more recent works have continued to explore chance-based processes and their potential to

convey memory and history through materiality. In 2017, Otero debuted a series of large-scale

sculptural oil paintings that resemble tapestry. Hanging freely, these works incorporate salvaged

materials from his studio, off-cuts of previous paintings, and found objects that are significant to his

native Puerto Rico. The many fragments that make up his compositions become powerful

meditations on past and present.

The artist’s early childhood memories are brought to the forefront in his most recent series of

paintings which see a return to figuration combined with his hallmark style of abstraction. Otero

paints and collages dreamlike scenes upon his vibrant structured canvases, depicting objects and

spaces that are loosely based on personal memories associated with the domestic sphere.

Probing the boundaries of figuration and abstraction, Otero’s most recent works continue to

expand the possibilities of painting and materiality.

Otero’s work is in numerous public and private collections including the Berezdivin Collection,

Puerto Rico; Bronx Museum of the Arts, Bronx NY; DePaul Art Museum, Chicago IL; Istanbul

Modern, Istanbul, Turkey; Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City MO; Margulies

Collection, Miami FL; Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Overland Park KS; North Carolina

Museum of Art, Raleigh NC; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York NY; UBS Art Collection,

Chicago IL; and the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond VA.