Angel Otero

From Kavi Gupta Gallery:

Angel Otero is quickly becoming well known for his textured canvases that weave between abstraction and representation taking their subject matter from an ongoing personal and often autobiographical narrative from his childhood in Puerto Rico. Memories, particularly those from his grandmother, parallel what he is now embracing in contemporary art.

Otero's paintings and sculptural assemblages also engage directly with a process-based art making. His works are extremely intuitive and often address the idea of failure and the push/pull of painting an inventive space that also relates directly to his own personal history. Structures attempt to balance the slippage between subject and object. Layers of silicone become fluid doilies floating on table tops and thick shapes of dried oil paint are glued into simple patterns recalled from memory.

The work doesn't operate as a presentation but rather as a self-generating proposition with which to construct, deconstruct, and reconstruct meaning over and over again. Unusual materials and aesthetic extravagance have been inspiring his recent work. Scale is expanding to comment of monumentality, surrounding the viewer and transforming the work to become physically accessible and present. His explorations of personal symbology  as well as abstract expressionism that brings to mind painters that continue to influence his work such as Philip Guston, Willem de Kooning, Georg Baselitz, and Joan Mitchell.

Angel Otero

otero60@hotmail.com aotero@artic.edu

Solo Exhibitions

2008 Cooking Boogaloo
Contemporary Art Workshop, Chicago, Illinois

2006 Revelando Enigmas
Galería Prinardi, San Juan, Puerto Rico

Selected Group Exhibitions

2008 New Insight
NEXT, The Invitational Exhibition of Emerging Art, The Merchandise Mart, Chicago, Illinois

2008 Living Room Paintings
Bucket Rider Gallery, Chicago, Illinois

2007 You Are In My Space
Gallery G2 and Project Space, Chicago, Illinois

2007 Open and Closed
Contemporary Art Workshop, Chicago, Illinois

2006 Universality of Art
Galería Prinardi USA, West Palm Beach, Florida

Tributo a Basquiat Puerto Rico
Galería Prinardi at Hotel Normandie, San Juan, Puerto Rico

2005 Visions of Excess
New Space Chicago, Chicago, Illinois

Awards

2007 Trustee Scholarship, School of the Art Institute of Chicago
2007 BFA Fellowship Award
2005 Recognition Merit Scholarship, School of the Art Institute of Chicago

Education

School Of the Art Institute of Chicago, MFA Candidate 2009
School Of the Art Institute of Chicago, BFA 2007
Universidad de Puerto Rico, 1999-2004