Puerto Rico-born and Brooklyn based artist Angel Otero is best known for his process-based painting that combines ‘oil skins’ with painting, celebrating the oil medium itself. Made from peeling off sheets of dried paint that was poured onto glass, these oil skins are grafted onto the canvas or sculpture often in addition to other mixed media materials such as resin, spray paint and silicone.
Paint itself signifies themes of chance and memory for the artist, as his work is rooted in an interest of personal history, abstract expressionism, and Spanish Baroque painterly traditions. Much of Otero’s early work was influenced by personal memories based on photographs or other family memorabilia combined with the gestural bravura of painters such as Nicolas Poussin, Pablo Picasso and Willem de Kooning.
Otero has been the subject of acclaimed solo exhibitions, including at Lehmann Maupin, New York (2021); Bronx Museum of the Arts, New York (2017); and the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston (2016). His work is in numerous public and private collections including the Bronx Museum of the Arts, New York; Istanbul Modern, Istanbul, Turkey; UBS Art Collection, Chicago; and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York.
The artist in his Brooklyn studio, 2019 | Photo: Taylor Dafoe
Provenance
Lehmann Maupin, New York Christie's, London, 14 February 2014, lot 280 Acquired at the above sale by the present owner
signed, titled and dated ' "Abita Gran Son" 2010 Angel Otero' on the reverse oil paint skins collaged on resin coated canvas 101.7 x 82 cm. (40 x 32 1/4 in.) Executed in 2010.