ANGEL OTERO

The exhibition’s title draws from a popular saying in Spanish, ‘La Primera Lluvia de Mayo,’ that stirred Otero’simagination in childhood. Local lore held that the first rain in May brings luck to those drenched by it; children andadults alike bathed in these inaugural downpours, a ritual in which natural forces conjured seemingly magical ones.The presence of water pervades Otero’s work, symbolic of the artist’s psychological and material explorations:self-reflection and a synthesis of ideas flow through his paintings like currents that the viewer can feel. Otero’ssignature mode of visual storytelling is exemplified in such vibrant paintings as ‘River Mouth’ (2024), where ared chair, bucket of water and bathtub embark on a voyage down a choppy stream. A jalousie window shutter(horizontally slatted) floats against an indistinct background, hovering like a low-lying sun over the scene.

Otero’s labour-intensive process of oil painting allows for an active exchange with the medium, inviting chance intohis practice. He begins each new work by painting the foreground scene on plexiglass first and then workingbackward in layers, so the background is painted last. Building in a layer of fabric to hold the entire structuretogether, he then scrapes off the resulting paint ‘skin’ and fixes it onto canvas. Afterward, Otero continues to addto the surface, collaging images of items like window shutters, folded paper airplanes and boats from a repositoryof previously made works to create an entirely new, multilayered composition. These resulting works possess atheatrical quality, with quotidian objects assuming the role of protagonists in elaborate painted settings.

The recurring objects in Otero’s art serve as psychological anchors for his forays into the realm of the ambiguousand magical. Often proxies for the people who raised him, they replace human figures while neverthelesssuggesting the reverberating effects of human experience: memories. Through his skilled merging of fragmentsfrom different sources, Otero effectively emulates the ways in which our recollections of the past, imprecise andfrequently distorted, converge to shape our present.

The exhibition at Hauser & Wirth West Hollywood also marks Otero’s return to sculpture. In ‘Rayuela (Hopscotch)’(2024), he combines the disparate elements of ceramics and welded metal, directly referencing the decorativewrought iron gates from his childhood home in Puerto Rico. Like the jalousie window shutters that recur in hiswork, these permanent yet permeable fixtures protect the home while allowing the elements to flow freely. Wind,air, light, sounds and smells travel through them, creating an ever-changing dynamic between interior and exterior.Complementing this sculpture’s ornate iron geometry is a glazed and painted hopscotch grid. Together, thesecomponents braid concepts of safety, beauty and play into the work. ‘Rayuela (Hopscotch)’ is the title of a novelby Argentine writer Julio Cortazar that has served as a key source of inspiration for Otero, who finds deep kinshipin Cortazar’s experimental storytelling, formal innovations, and playful pursuit of life’s relentless and beautifulmysteries.

Press release courtesy Hauser & Wirth