Puerto Rican artist Angel Otero first exhibition of paintings and sculptures at the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston
Angel Otero, Untitled
HOUSTON, TX —Angel
Otero is a painter and sculptor whose lush, seductive canvases and hybrid works
in porcelain and steel test the elasticity of these traditional forms. The Contemporary
Arts Museum Houston is pleased to present Angel Otero: Everything and Nothing,
which chronicles the evolution of the artist’s practice from 2009 to date. The
exhibition features four distinct bodies of work, including his iconic “skin”
and “transfer” painting, early paintings which are created using silicon and
collage, as well as sculpture. Otero offers thought-provoking new dimensions to
the field of abstract painting. Drawing upon the history of painting, the artist
presents a proposition of shifting perceptions of the genre–what it is and what
it can become. His experimentations in painting push the field into new
territory for our time. Moreover, his sculptures invite audiences to suspend
expectations surrounding the three-dimensional form; like his paintings,
Otero’s sculptural work infuses the genre with narratives that are both
personal and universal. This is the artist’s first survey exhibition.
Angel Otero, No Light
on Full Moon
Born in Santurce,
Puerto Rico in 1981, Otero draws on geography and familial history as
inspiration in his work. Otero did not grow up immersed in the arts. At the age
of 12, Otero found an art class through an advertisement that stated, “Do you
want to learn how to paint like Bob Ross? We give official classes.” Otero was
by far the youngest student; his classmates were all over the age of 60. As a
child he practiced drawing by recreating comic figures, never as interested in
the content as in the process. The idea of abstraction resonated with Otero
when he visited the Museo de Arte de Ponce and saw the paintings of fellow
Puerto Rican Arnaldo Roche; the work left an indelible imprint upon him.
Despite being discouraged from his pursuit to become an artist and a short
foray as an insurance agent, Otero chose to study at the School of the Art
Institute of Chicago, with the support of a teacher. Once in Chicago, Otero
immersed himself in the history of painting, especially modern and contemporary
art. He successfully completed undergraduate and graduate studies at the School
of the Art Institute, specializing in painting. Otero is currently based in New
York and continues his practice of exploring objects, process, and
transformation. For the artist, the question itself has become the subject.
Ángel Otero, Vegas
Although Otero’s works
are visually abstract, they are embedded with deeply personal narratives. His
early still life paintings are inspired by childhood memories of Otero’s
grandmother’s home, especially the light and composition of her dining table.
The “skin paintings” for which is he is most well-known emerged from an
exploratory process—indeed from “failure.” The exhibition’s title is taken from
a 2011 work by Otero, which is borrowed, in turn, from a parable by the great
Argentinean writer Jorge Luis Borges. Otero’s Everything and Nothing, with its
undulating surface of rich hues, primarily red and orange, is an example of his
skin paintings. The works are inspired by iconic paintings throughout art
history, particularly the Baroque period. In creating the “skin” paintings,
Otero begins by painstakingly recreating well-known masterpieces in oil on
large sheets of Plexiglas, which he then destroys to make other works by
peeling off the oil-paint skin and collaging it on a new canvas, thereby
leaving the original image either completely obscured or barely visible. In one
case, Otero recreated Titian’s Bacchanal of the Andrians (Museo del Prado,
Madrid), dissolving the scene of revelry on the island of Andros into an explosion
of color and unstructed composition. The resulting painting, Bacchanale (2012),
reveals notions of the studio as a laboratory and of the artist’s hand
performing a range of experimental action. This process shows Otero’s artistic
impulse to insert himself into the art historical canon even while displaying
ambivalent feelings about the hierarchy assigned to its narratives.
Angel Otero, In the
mood for love
Otero began making his
“transfer paintings” in 2010 and has consistently used them to counterbalance
his signature “skin” paintings. While the latter channel the artist’s struggles
with the weight of art history, the former function more as a personal journey
into his intimate life. The “transfer paintings” are made by projecting a
digitized photograph onto canvas to create a template, outlining parts of the
image in silicone, applying loose graphite pigment to the silicone, and
compressing the surface with Plexiglas. One such work, Portrait of Dad When He
Was Young (2010), is of his father as a boy. The portrait and other “transfers,”
as he calls them, function more like monotype prints than paintings, but the
artist deploys the process to great effect. Generally large in scale, the works
are based on old photographs the artist collected while on a visit home to
Puerto Rico. Otero digitally recomposes and, in this case, intentionally
cropped the image, allowing viewers to focus on the small child in a pressed
uniform holding fast to an adult’s hand. The sparse use of graphite powder
infuses the figure with an inherent innocence and vulnerability. In addition to
the early transfers, the exhibition will feature a series of Otero’s newer
transfers created using cadmium (a red pigment) that underscore the artist’s
fascination with his broader cultural interests shaped by childhood fascinations
of the mainland. The title of his red painting LAGO (2015), for example, is a
reference to the fictional red-painted town in Clint Eastwood’s 1973 American
Western, High Plains Drifter.
Always challenging
materiality and process in his studio, Otero turned to sculpture in 2012. Otero
drew on his memories and, again, on old photographs to produce these works. The
wrought-iron fence and balcony structures of his grandmother’s home in San
Juan, where he spent much of his childhood while his parents were working,
permeated his imagination. The interior of his grandmother’s home was filled
with bric-a-brac and curiosities, including ceramics. The objects that were
deemed precious were placed out of his reach, which only led him, in
retrospect, to imagine their transformation into totemic objects. The
sculptures started as broken pieces of porcelain and masses of unfired clay
that Otero then placed in large fragments of wrought-iron gates he found in
antique stores or on the streets. This process was so new and experimental that
studios would not allow Otero to use their kilns, so he purchased his own and
placed it in his studio. Through trial and error, he once again stumbled onto a
new method and a signature aesthetic.
The
Contemporary Arts Museum Houston is located at 5216 Montrose Boulevard, at the
corner of Montrose and Bissonnet, in the heart of Houston’s Museum District.
Hours are Tuesday, Wednesday, and Friday 10AM–7PM, Thursday 10AM–9PM, Saturday
10AM–6PM, and Sunday 12PM–6PM.
Admission is always free. For more information, visit CAMH.ORG or call 713 284
8250.
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