Angel Otero at Kavi Gupta and John Santoro at McCormick
by Chris Miller, New City Art, October 11, 2011
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In 1845, J.M.W. Turner reportedly joked: “Indistinctness is my fault,” in response to an American collector who despaired finding many recognizable details in one of his atmospheric seascapes. In some of his magnificent swirls, nothing was recognizable at all. Was Turner an early Abstract Expressionist? Not if you distinguish the epic struggle of man against nature from the psychological struggle of self against the world. Curiously enough, a similar Romanticism has recently emerged simultaneously in the work of two painters now exhibiting work in adjoining galleries at 835 West Washington.
Cont....
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KaviGupta_Review126.pdf
Angel Otero
by Meghan Daily, Modern Painters, May 2011
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Otero's first One-person show, "Memento", is also his New York debut, but the painter is hardly an unknown art world quantity. Fresh out of the MFA program at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, the precocious artist had exhibtion in 2009 and 2010of his abstractions and Spanish Baroque-inspired still lifes at Kavi Gupta Galelry and the Chicago Cultural Center. Continued...
Angel Otero
by Merrily Kerr, Time Our New York, March 29, 2011
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Angel Otero’s unconventional process—fashioning assemblages or lively paintings using “skins” of oil paint applied to glass before being peeled off—is the draw in his New York solo debut. An awkward anthropomorphic object perched on a chintzy armchair, messy Expressionist interiors in garish colors and one uninspired composition with text demonstrate the young artist’s competing sensibilities. Far better are Otero’s large-scale abstractions—action paintings in which paint itself seems to have agency, shooting off the edge of the canvas, bunching dramatically or seductively veiling its support.
Continued....
Download PDF: KaviGupta_Review115.pdf
Inside the Artist's Studio: Angel Otero in Ridgewood
by Benjamin Sutton, The L Magazine, February 16, 2011
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How do you begin a painting?
The work starts from a very personal point. I'm using oil paint but in reverse, so I paint on glass, and I paint in a very traditional way with oil paint and brushes. After I'm done with the imagery or text we cover that with a whole layer of oil paint. And from there it goes to dry for a while and after a month or a few weeks we scrape it very slowly and it comes out with a really interesting texture. It's kind of like a transfer, because I also have to be thinking in reverse. In a traditional painting you paint a background, you paint a chair and you paint the model in the chair, and here I've got to paint the model, the chair and then cover that with the background. It's very challenging, which makes it really beautiful.
Download PDF: KaviGupta_Review111.pdf
New Skin: Q+A With Angel Otero
by Madison Moore, Art in America, March 7, 2011
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Angel Otero's studio in industrial Ridgewood, Queens currently lies fairly empty. Sitting in the main workspace is a reduced-scale model of Lehmann Maupin's Chrystie Street gallery, complete with mockups. In one corner a few gold "oil skins," the artist's sheets of dried oil paint, drape atop a stool like the slough of a reptile. These are the remainders from "Memento," Otero's first solo show at Lehmann Maupin, currently open through April 17.
Download PDF: KaviGupta_Review112.pdf
Must-See Painting Shows: February
New Americans Paintings Blog, February, 2011
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It’s February now, which means plenty of snow and plenty of new shows opening this month. The editorial staff at New American Paintings have put together a list of more than 65 of the top painting exhibitions on view at private galleries across the country in February—from New York to Los Angeles, Houston to Chicago, Atlanta, and more—including more than a dozen shows from artists previously included in New American Paintings and featuring more than 50 notable and not-to-be-missed shows from across the country.
EDITORS PICK - Angel Otero, February 17 – April 10, 2011, Lehman Maupin;
EDITOR’S PICK - Claire Sherman, February 19 – March 26, 2011, Kavi Gupta Gallery
Narrative Texture
by James Chad Hanna, Art + Auction, February 2011
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Angel Otero spends as much time working with dried paint as wet. Thr Brooklyn-based artist, 29, who joined Lehmann Maupin last May, fashions the surfaces of his large expressionistic pictures and assemblages from “oil skins,” created by pouring oil paint into glass, allowing it to dry, then peeling away the resulting sheets of color. He combines these skins with other materials-silicone, spray paint, and resin among them-on canvas but also sometimes applies them to furniture and frames. For his first solo show with the New York gallery, from February 17 through April 10 he is presenting new works with such inspirations as Surrealist literature, Latin American poetry, and Jean-Paul Sartre. “It’s fresh subject matter, but they still highlight the process he’s become know for,” says David Maupin. Although Otero’s canvases and assemblages can hint at Georg Baselitz, Philip Guston and Willem de Kooning with a not to the Spanish Boroque, he has also drawn on his familial relationships and life in his native Puerto Rico, which he left at the age of 24 to stud at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Studio Visit: Interview with Angel Otero
by Marina Cashdan, The Huffington Post, September 6, 2010
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My inaugural Studio Visit is with a young artist named Angel Otero (b. 1981, Santurce, Puerto Rico). I was first introduced to Otero's work through his Chicago gallery Kavi Gupta. What drew me to his work was his sense of materiality and especially his unique use of what he calls "oil skins," paint that has been left to dry on plexiglass sheets, leaving an almost plastic-like sheet of dried pigments.
Download PDF: KaviGupta_Review98.pdf
Angel Otero
by James Yood, ARTFORUM, April 2010
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With the ebullience of youth - he's not yet thirty - Puerto Rican-born, Brooklyn-based Angel Otero fills old bottles with new wine, bringing innovative and dramatic formal strategies to bear on conventional formats and subjects
Download PDF: KaviGupta_Review67.pdf
Artists gear up for Armory: Local talent represented at international fair, Biennial exhibition in New York
by Lauren Viera, Chicago Tribune, March 4, 2010
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It's Armory Week. Falling on certain ears, this news conjures knights conferencing in gaggles, their heavy chain mail collectively clinking. But creative types know better: Armory Week is one of the biggest events of the year for visual artists.
Download PDF: KaviGupta_Review64.pdf
Finding His Voice in the Now
Chicago Tribune Magazine, April 19, 2009
Download PDF: KaviGupta_Review48.pdf