Angel Otero and Leslie Martinez

The Speed Art Museum is pleased to present a new installation of two recent monumental works by leading contemporary artists Angel Otero (b. 1981, Santurce, Puerto Rico) and Leslie Martinez (b. 1985, McAllen, Texas). Through combinatory practices of material exploration, painterly gesture, and technicolor mark-making, Otero and Martinez both depict broad ideas of our shared humanity, memory, and personal identity. For these artists, abstraction is the kaleidoscopic means of communicating complex, deeply personal narratives and concepts informed by their own lives and familial histories. The two immersive paintings featured in this presentation, both recent museum acquisitions, also reflect a new direction for the Speed’s contemporary art collection and program—one that actively centers and celebrates artwork by artists of color, queer folx, and female-identifying peoples.

Angel Otero’s (he/him/his) works are both intimately biographical and formally experimental, poetically merging realism with abstraction. Through an innovative, labor-intensive process, the artist paints onto large sheets of glass, scrapes the partially dried oil paint from the surface, and then reassembles the resulting “skins” into multi-layered compositions. Otero continues to paint, leading to swirling, visually raucous scenes like Backyard. Drawing from the visual vocabularies of art historical figures such as Willem de Kooning, Pablo Picasso, Jackson Pollock, and Nicolas Poussin, Otero fuses his painterly images with fragmented memories of family, his past, and his native Puerto Rico. Instead of literally representing his life through art, Otero optically chronicles moments within it through a constant negotiation between lived experience and an engagement with the history of Western painting.

Leslie Martinez (they/them/their) creates alluring paintings and sculptures that directly engage notions of place, climate, landscape, and queer personhood through unconventional methods of applying and interlaying various materials, textures, and hues on canvas. One of the most compelling artists to emerge in the last five years, Martinez’s signature style of abstract painting features viscerally tactile and spatial atmospheres created with physical ingredients like fabric rags, recycled clothing, and crushed stone that reveal discordant visual intersections of destruction and emergence. The artist’s work on view, entitled Blazing Bounty, speaks to recent issues of the current climate emergency in Texas and around the world, including wildfires, drought, and abnormal weather patterns. Martinez’s paintings also invite readings of their biography, including their own trans, non-binary identity, and their intergenerational homelands adjacent to the Texas-Mexico border.

In broad terms, these artists address complex themes that invite us to expand our own understanding of what abstraction can convey. For Otero and Martinez, ideas of place and personal history are intrinsically entwined with paint and expressionistic verve, allowing us to engage with artworks that imaginatively synthesize universally relevant stories with swathes of color and material play.

Current Speed is a series of changing contemporary art exhibitions and focus presentations that introduce the Kentuckiana community to new and emerging artists as well as celebrated mid-career artists previously underrecognized in the region. The 2021 exhibition featured artist Sky Hopinka, while the 2024 iteration will highlight artist Kathia St. Hilaire. Current Speed exhibitions are open to the public and included with general museum admission.

The Current Speed exhibition series is initiated and organized by Tyler Blackwell, Curator of Contemporary Art at Speed Art Museum.

About the Speed Art Museum
The Speed Art Museum, in Louisville, Kentucky, is an independent, encyclopedic museum and the oldest and largest art museum in the state, where our mission is to invite everyone to celebrate art forever. Established in 1927 by philanthropist Hattie Bishop Speed, the Museum has undergone several renovations and expansions, now occupying over 200,000 sq ft on the University of Louisville’s campus. The Speed serves as a cultural hub where people can connect with each other and the work of artists from across the world in new and unexpected ways. Learn more at www.speedmuseum.org.