Works on view in Hong Kong such as Caribbean Symphony (2023) and Moonriver (2023) reflect this abstraction and demonstrate Otero’s reverse technique, by which he paints the foreground scene and then works backwards. So the background, frequently inspired by historical abstract masterpieces, is painted last. “You have to start with all the information and work in reverse, just like history,” the artist says as he chips away at the surface of one of his waves in progress. “If you want to understand more about [memory and context], you have to work backwards.”

Otero puts his heavily layered paintings through various processes that obscure the context and subject, include scraping, collaging and chiselling, but simultaneously reveal selected aspects of said layers, functioning in many ways as a wave does. “I’m not in pursuit of the idea of it [a wave] as part of a landscape or location, but rather the way it serves as a metaphor for bringing and taking, hiding and revealing,” the artist says, describing how a wave’s fluid nature lends itself well to acting like both a barrier and a channel. 

In this way, a wave intrinsically functions like memory—it ebbs and flows, showing us what it chooses to, when it chooses to. Similarly, the artist’s control over what is and isn’t revealed is indicative of the his need for self-preservation and protection. As open and welcoming as the artist is about his process and studio, there’s parts of himself reflected in his work he wishes to conceal. “There are subjects which are too personal,” Otero says about the content in his paintings. “It’s a look into my own psyche—what I’m thinking about when I’m creating art.” 

Fundamentally, Otero’s practice grapples with how he, and in turn we the viewers, preserve and excavate memories and personal histories. His connection with his childhood and family in Puerto Rico as well as his past is felt in his studio through a collage of photographs of friends, family and other memorabilia on a wall next to his desk. 

Both Otero’s work and his process reflect the subjective, imperfect nature of memory and its ability to distort reality. The intimate idea and memory of home is accentuated in his paintings through depicting everyday, familiar items as subject matter. Beds, couches, chairs and other pieces of furniture or household items he remembers from his childhood house in Puerto Rico become details, which he paints and then proceeds to mark through erasing and scraping.  He inflicts these gestures after scraping the oil skins and sticking them onto the canvas, building and collaging images of these items on a new, multilayered composition, alluding to how the construction of memory is dependent on building on what came before and assimilating a variety of experiences, symbolised by materials, into one narrative based on both fact and sentiment. In Breakwater (2023), for instance, Otero depicts a wave breaking over chair with a lifeboat and small fans attached to it, creating a surreal, dreamlike narrative. 

His work reflects a fusion of abstraction and the surreal, resulting from a subconscious inspiration from magical realism, in particular the late Gabriel García Márquez’s A Hundred Years of Solitude. Similar to García Márquez, Otero draws strongly from his own experiences growing up, and his memories of his grandmother and great-grandmother. 

His affinity for magical realism was visualised in a work that was seen in his New York exhibition Swimming Where Time Was last autumn at Hauser and Wirth—a newer iteration of which, The Sea Remembers (2023), is on view at the Hong Kong show. He had painted minuscule waves (symbolisig the ocean) on an old table; this motif eventually grew into a body of work featuring waves painted on a piano. “It [magical realism] is about how you take on something that is very specific and real, and then push it towards this sort of fantastical world,” the artist explains. “It’s not fiction or fake; it’s just opening windows of the what-ifs, of possibilities.” In fusing the fantastical and fact, he extends our perception of how we feel in these memories, again mirroring the intrinsically subjective nature of memory.

In an attempt to hold on to fading memories and keep them alive, Otero began collecting religious objects belonging to his family members; in particular, his mother, grandmother and great-grandmother, after they passed away. “It was symbolic of their faith in this thing [it could be a talisman or a blade], that I want to feel connected to,” the artist says, clarifying that he does this despite not being particularly religious himself; it’s his belief in his grandmother and ancestors rather than his belief in what they believed, which inspires him to hold onto and retain past traditions. “And so I keep them. I don’t want to lose them.” It also prompts him to think about how memory and history are preserved through future generations. “I am curious about my history, but it bounces within generations, and towards understanding how I navigate my life—how I am as a father and as an individual.” 

Otero poignantly captures the conflicting and complex feeling of holding on to things that we think we’re losing, and the fear and struggle of losing traditions and a connection to heritage—and how that impacts the future. This personal inquisition into memories of home and family or personal histories translates into a universally resounding sentiment, and perhaps is why his works are so popular and widely appreciated. Searching for and preserving the idea of home and belonging is a journey that is always in constant flux for not only the artist, but many others as well. 

This journey was accelerated during the pandemic, when the artist was unable to travel back and forth between New York and Puerto Rico as he usually does. Being away from his home island for almost two years propelled him to consider opening a studio in San Juan. Already in the works, this new studio is intended to be a more intimate space for creating smaller works, creative contemplation and brainstorming. Beyond this, he wants to engage the community and facilitate reconnection: “It might be more monumental and welcome a broader element outside just making art,” Otero says.

After basing much of the content of his art on his memories of Puerto Rico, the artist says he’s “curious to see what emotional state I’ll be at, what will come out of that, and what it feels like to be home” when he is eventually able to practise and make work in Puerto Rico. “There came a moment where I had two states of minds towards making art in Puerto Rico, and I feel I owe it to my island in an emotional way.” 

In the meantime, audiences in Hong Kong will be exposed to, and perhaps challenged by, the vibrant but fraught aesthetic that results from his relationship with his memories of home, as well as the compilation of colours and intensity of the heavy-duty gestures—scrapes and erasures—Otero inflicts on his canvases. The abstraction is indicative of his intention to visually encapsulate the difficulty of accessing memory, as well as to keep viewers from immediately being privy to his inner world. “I don’t want people quickly entering it [the work]; there are intimate questions about growing up in Puerto Rico,” the artist says introspectively. Traversing the many layers of Otero’s works evokes open-ended questions and sentiments about home and for the artist, “about what it is [like] to be away from home, leaving home, needing to go back home, wishing that the past might have been different—or about feeling glad that it wasn’t”. 

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