Angel Otero

Angel Otero 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 and traditions of art history, as well as his own lived experience. Otero is best known for the Oil Skin works which 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.

Drawing from his personal memories of growing up in Puerto Rico and the gestural mark-making of canonical artists whose work he first discovered in books as a child, Otero ingeniously creates visual realms that evoke the enchanting and sometimes strange ways in which everyday objects become personified through the lens of memory. Splitting time between Chicago and Puerto Rico, 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, New York; DePaul Art Museum, Chicago; Istanbul Modern; Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City; Margulies Collection, Miami; North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Speed Art Museum, Louisville; UBS Art Collection, Chicago; and the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond.