Itinerary: Angel Otero at Contemporary Art Museum, Raleigh, North Carolina
For Otero, oil paint is a sculptural material, capable of taking on form and mass. His "paintings" throw off the trappings of conventional process from the start. He covers glass with multiple layers of color (in reverse order), allows them to partially dry, then scrapes off the entire built-up composition and transfers it to canvas, where it takes on a life of its own as material. In addition to oil skins that cans stretch, fold, and wrinkly into complex surfaces (deep relief and fully dimensional), he molds drying paint like clay and salvages desiccated scrapings as ready-made fragments. All of these elements find their way into sculptural assemblages, where they combine with porcelain, iron, found items, and furniture to create distinctive objects and installation that fuse rebellious improvisation and discovery with memory and the remnants of tradition.