Angel Otero, Everything and Nothing: CAMH | Houston, TX

Born and raised in Puerto Rico, Otero has pushed against the art historical narrative with seductive canvases and dynamic objects made with porcelain and steel. The artist consistently tests the elasticity of venerable art canons while oscillating between familial memories and the immense gesture of painting and sculpture. Mining the expansive territory of these artistic traditions, Otero offers a trove of ideas that have informed not only the content of his work but also its material composition and processes. Angel Otero: Everything and Nothing chronicles the evolution of Otero’s practice to date and features four distinct bodies of work created between 2006 and 2015, including his iconic skin and transfer paintings, early work created using silicon and collage, as well as sculpture.

In Everything and Nothing all aspects of the artist’s practice are on view. The exhibition brings together work created nearly over a decade, allowing viewers to consider the overt themes, as well as more subtle underpinnings, of the artist’s oeuvre. The artist’s work and intentions are pronounced and demystified, and what initially appear as disparate lines of production and conceptual engagement suddenly coalesce into a continuous extrapolation of imagery that is at once intimate and iconic. Oterodigs deep into the corporeal, cultural, and intellectual repositories that have shaped him as an artist; Otero’s use of these repositories allows the artist to cast wide the vast net of art history in an effort to assert his own place along its tangled and complex narrative. This struggle has sustained his creative endeavors over the past decade and promises to propel him well into the future.

Angel Otero: Everything and Nothing is generously supported by Jill and Jay Bernstein, Jereann and Holland Chaney, Hilda and Greg Curran, Marilyn and Larry Fields, Louise Jamail, Kavi Gupta Gallery, Lehmann Maupin, Bernard I. Lumpkin and Carmine D. Boccuzzi, John and Amy Phelan, and Robin and Andrew Schirrmeister. The exhibition is also made possible in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts.

— Curatorial text courtesy CAM Houston