ANGEL OTERO: THAT FIRST RAIN IN MAY
Hauser & Wirth is pleased to present That First Rain in May by the artist Angel Otero at West Hollywood. Otero’s personal recollections of his upbringing in Puerto Rico are woven through this array of new paintings and sculptures.
May 29 - August 24, 2024
Through a labor-intensive process of oil painting on plexiglass, then scraping the applied medium into ‘skins’ which he subsequently collages with wet paint onto canvas, Otero has developed a signature mode of expressive storytelling.
The artist’s unique approach allows for an active exchange with the medium, inviting chance and unpredictability into his practice. In surreal and fragmentary scenes, Otero mines his personal history to make sense of the current moment, animating everyday objects and environments that are loosely based on the domestic spaces of his youth.
While Otero is best known as a painter, his exhibition at Hauser & Wirth marks the artist’s return to sculpture. Combining ceramics with welded metal, three new sculptural works on view evoke the mutable landscapes of childhood remembered.
Their subject matter consists of identifiable objects that undergo transformation and reconstruction, creating uncanny new contexts. Otero’s playful reimagining of these artifacts and their associations is not dissimilar to the ways in which memory becomes distorted over time.
Angel Otero was born in 1981 in Santurce, Puerto Rico, where he resided until moving to Chicago in 2004. He currently splits his time between New York and Puerto Rico. In 2009, Otero was included in the exhibition ‘Constellations’ at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, shortly after receiving his MFA at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Otero’s practice 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 through addressing art history, as well as his own lived experience. Otero is best known for the Oil Skin works he 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.