Angel Otero, a Puerto Rican artist based in New York and now returned home, presents his first UK exhibition 'Agua Salada' (Salt Water) at Hauser & Wirth Somerset. The show features works created during a six-week residency at Durslade Farm, where Otero layered, scraped, and peeled paint to create densely textured surfaces blending abstraction and figuration. The exhibition includes paintings, an outdoor sculpture, and recurring motifs such as doors, bedframes, pianos, and clocks that serve as portals between memory and the present. Otero's signature Oil Skin series, begun in 2010, is also on view, alongside family photographs collaged into the works.
The exhibition matters because it marks Otero's first UK showing and deepens his exploration of memory, place, and identity through material-driven painting. The saltwater title carries multiple meanings—ocean, chemistry, and affect—reflecting the artist's visceral connection to the sea and his godmother's memory. Otero's work speaks to how place and family leave mineral traces on us, how grievance crystallizes into identity, and how nostalgia can be both comfort and constraint. The show positions Otero as a significant contemporary voice working at the intersection of abstraction, figuration, and personal narrative.