Angel Otero’s Canvases Harmonise Abstraction and the Fantastical at Hauser & Wirth

Exploring a fondness for magical realism, Angel Otero‘s paintings are as abstract as they are fantastical.

The Puerto Rican artist’s much-anticipated solo show Swimming Where Time Was (10 November–23 December 2022) at Hauser & Wirth New York, 22nd Street, is his first since joining the gallery in February this year and features a new body of work.

Otero, who is based in New York and Puerto Rico, has a practice that is distinctly process focused. Using labour-intensive techniques of layering, peeling, and collaging oil paint, Otero’s vivid canvases reveal the artist’s extraordinary aptitude for visualising personal narratives.

Otero’s enchanting compositions reference intimate memories and observed histories to construct dreamlike scenes that drift between abstraction and figuration.

In Concerto (2022), the artist depicts a piano at the centre of a clementine-coloured room, surrounded by a school of orange goldfish suspended in mid-air. Familiar objects such as paint buckets and a vintage glass lamp decorate the scene, demonstrating the artist’s peculiar knack for blending the everyday with the surreal.

Swimming Where Time Was by Angel Otero is on display at Hauser & Wirth’s New York gallery until 23 December.

Main image: Angel Otero, Mi Acuario (2022). Oil paint and oil paint skins collaged on canvas. 241.3 x 360.7 x 3.8 cm. © Angel Otero. Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth.