Angel Otero, Lago: Kavi Gupta | 219 N. Elizabeth St. Chicago, IL, 60607

Kavi Gupta  is proud to announce an exhibition of new paintings, Lago, by Angel Otero. This will be the first exhibition to showcase Otero’s series of silicone transfers onto canvas with brightly powdered pigment.

In this new series, Otero distills photographic images into line patterns in order to transfer onto canvas using a unique monoprinting technique. An image is traced onto paper with silicone and is then “stamped” onto the surface of the canvas using pure powdered pigment. The resulting works distort the original image while leaving the memory of both its compositional and commemorative structure.

Material transformation is fundamental to Otero’s practice, as is the artist’s relationship to contemporary painting’s fundamental building blocks. While earlier series celebrated aspects of art history and the act of painting itself, the works in “Lago” turn to photography and film for inspiration. Titled after the red-painted town that serves as the backdrop for the 1973 Clint Eastwood film High Plains Drifter, Otero’s latest vibrantly colored, monochromatic canvases propose new ways of seeing in our digital age.