Angel OTERO Untitled (SK-NG, Album series) -... Lot 18

Angel OTERO Untitled (SK-NG, Album series) - 2013 Oil paint and oil paint skins glued to canvas Signed, dated and titled on the back "SK-NG". 102 × 81.50 cm Oil paint and oil paint skins collaged on canvas; signed, dated and titled on the reverse 40.15 × 32.08 in. Provenance: Kavi Gupta Gallery, Chicago Acquired directly from the latter by the current owner Angel OTERO Quote: "For me, very early on, art consisted of painting landscapes... then a guy showed me images of a Pollock painting and it shocked me; It was very liberating that the world accepted this as art."- Angel Otero Angel Otero's artistic approach combines methods of formation and deformation, a way of working that results in images and objects that seem to be in a perpetual state of becoming. Among his most illustrative works are his "paint skins". The singularity of Otero's work is inseparable from his particular brand of process-oriented formal innovation. Painting upside down, he applies oil paint to large sheets of glass. Once these have dried (which can take up to two weeks), Otero peels the oil paint from their surfaces with a set of "blades", then glues their looped compositions to the canvas, modifying their broken surfaces with additional painted gestures, shapes and letters. "These procedures," Otero told me, "produce surprises to which I have become addicted. Assembled negatively - like a print or photographic film - Otero's recent textual invocations of twentieth-century philosophy (which include quotations from Sartre, among other totemic figures) also serve as visual essays on the metaphysical instability of our own astonishingly thoughtless and culturally stunned age. Angel Otero's approach to art making combines methods of formation and deformation, a way of working that results in images and objects that seem to be in a continual state of becoming. Among his most illustrative bodies of work are his so-called "paint skins,". The singularity of Otero's work is indivisible from his particular species of process-oriented formal innovation. Painting in reverse, with a nod to the filmMemento(2000), he applies oil paint onto large sheets of glass. Once these have dried (which can take up to two weeks), Otero peels the oil paint off their surfaces with a set of 'blades', then adheres their buckled compositions onto canvas, amending their broken surfaces with additional painted gestures, shapes and letters. "These procedures", Otero told me, "produce surprises to which I've become addicted". Assembled negatively - like a print or photographic film - Otero's recent text-based invocations of twentieth-century philosophy (which include quotes from Sartre, among other totemic figures) also serve as visual essays in metaphysical instability for our own stunningly unreflective, culturally dumbfounded time.