Highly textural in composition and powerful in colour, ‘Curtains of a Silent Window’ (2022) is an outstanding example of Angel Otero’s experimentation with the materiality and possibilities of paint. Layers of cadmium red fade into deep purple and bright green, as etched lines traverse the canvas, revealing yellow and copper tones underneath, forming a resolutely abstract and striking painting.
Otero’s captivating abstractions are rooted in personal experience and art historical reference. As curator Valerie Cassel Oliver observes: ‘[Otero’s] work oscillates between the instinctual frames of nostalgia and memory and the immense gesture of painting’. [1] He harnesses early memories from his childhood as the springboard for his works, from objects and spaces in his grandmother’s home in Puerto Rico to canonical paintings he encountered in books. Speaking about the artists he references, Otero clarifies: ‘My plan is not to get at what each individual artist or work means to me; it’s a formal decision more than anything else. For me, it’s like the way I choose a paintbrush – it’s a kind of tool that I’m reactivating in my own language’. [2] Accordingly, in his work, Otero does not reveal these sources directly; instead, he collapses and collages them to an entirely new composition. In line with this is the painting’s enigmatic title, which alludes to the artist’s process, Otero poetically explains that this work is like sunlight peeking through a curtain composed of layers of history.
Otero’s nuanced and complex methods underscore the skill and aesthetic sensibility that defines his practice. To create ‘Curtains of a Silent Window’, Otero lays down representational imagery in oil paint on plexiglass – in this instance, he references a painting by Willem De Kooning. He then covers his initial composition with gestural, thick layers of oil paint, building up the surface of the work. Otero describes this method as ‘painting in reverse’. He explains: ‘First I paint the scene, then I cover it with the background’. [3] Here, while the paint is still wet, he scratches another referential work – a Picasso etching – into its surface. He then waits for the medium to partially dry and scrapes up its solidifying surface layers. The paint ‘skins’ Otero creates during this process are reconstructed onto the canvas, yielding a complex and vibrant compositions that demonstrates the physicality of oil paint in an idiosyncratic way.
Accordingly, ‘Curtains of a Silent Window’ is a testament to Otero’s remarkable ingenuity and mastery of his medium. This highly exploratory and creative approach to painting positions the artist among the most innovative and important artists of the present day.
1.) Verlie Cassel Oliver, Terry R. Myers, Christian Viveros-Fauné, ‘Angel Otero. Everything and Nothing’, Housten TX: Contemporary Arts Museum Houston and Skira, 2017, p. 13.
2.) Angelo Otero quoted in Taylor Dafoe, ‘”Act First and Then Think”: Artist Angel Otero on How to Turn Failure Into Fuel for Creativity’, artnet news, 19 April 2019 (accessed 28 April 2022
