Known as the Transfer Series, this body of work takes imagery from Otero’s personal history and distills it down to a line pattern evocative of a traditional woodcut print. In another body of work, Otero employs silicone and powdered pigments to create fragile abstract impressions on canvas. Those peeled paint skins can then be rearranged on a canvas to create a layered, textured abstract composition, which can be interpreted as a re-mixed material memory of its own creation. Among his most illustrative bodies of work are his so-called “paint skins,” which are made by painting on glass then, once dry, scraping off the paint in sheets like peeled layers of skin. Otero’s approach to art making combines methods of formation and deformation, a way of working that results in images and objects that seem to be in a continual state of becoming. Angel Otero is a Puerto Rican-born painter and sculptor whose work is influenced by the nature and formulation of memories.
