Angel Otero: Swimming Where Time Was

Born in 1981 in Santurce, Puerto Rico, Angel Otero received his MFA at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Otero’s practice is known for employing highly innovative techniques that challenge the parameters of his materials, revealing the intrinsic qualities of paint. His works are rooted in abstract image making and engage with ideas of memory through addressing art history, as well as his own lived experience. Otero is well known for the Oil Skin works he began in 2010, an ongoing series that demonstrates the transformative nature of the artist’s practice and his dedication to expanding the visual field of abstract expressionism. Otero’s work is in numerous collections, including the Berezdivin Collection, Puerto Rico and the Bronx Museum of the Arts.

Artist, curator, and critic Andrew Woolbright is based in Brooklyn, New York, and is an MFA graduate from RISD in painting. Woolbright is the founder and director of the gallery Below Grand located on the Lower East Side in New York. In addition to curating, he is an Editor-at-Large at the Brooklyn Rail. In 2021, Woolbright curated the show Density Betrays Us with Angela Dufresne and Cash Ragona at the Hole; and curated shows at Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center and Hesse Flatow in the summer or 2022. He currently teaches at School of Visual Arts and Pratt Institute and is a 2021-2022 resident at the Sharpe Walentas Studio Program in Dumbo.