Painter · Mexico City
Marisol Otero
I paint the insides of buildings in the weeks before they come down.
- Long room, Doctor Erazo2026
- Oil on linen
- 210 × 300 cm
Shown to scale. The figure standing beside it is 1.70 m.
Statement
On the work
A building that is about to come down is honest in a way an occupied one never is.
The paper comes off, the fittings go, and what is left is the plaster, the light and forty years of small repairs nobody meant anyone to see. I work on site for as long as the site exists, standing in the room with the canvas leaning on the opposite wall, and I finish in the studio from the drawings and from what I can still remember of the hour.
Nothing in the paintings is invented and nothing is being mourned. I am not interested in ruins, or in the idea that the old city was better. I am interested in the twenty minutes of an afternoon when a room that has been emptied is still, briefly, a room. After that it is a site, and somebody else's problem.
- Working in Oil on linen and board
- These rooms since 2019
- This text Rewritten February 2026
Marisol Otero
Doctor Erazo 84, February 2026
Works
Nine paintings, drawn to scale
Every plate below sits at the same scale, so the sizes compare. The bar above them is one metre.
Available
Private collection
Available
Surface
Close up, at actual size
The bar under every plate is five centimeters, so you can read how big a single mark is.
Method
How long one takes
Oil dries by oxidation and not by evaporation, which is why a painting bought in April is delivered in the winter.
01Ground
Two coats of rabbit-skin size and a warm gray ground, sanded between them.
1 day 10 days
02Drawing
The room set out on site in thinned raw umber, in one sitting, standing where I will stand for the rest of it.
2 days 4 days
03Underpainting
The whole surface covered once, lean and almost without white, so nothing later sits on bare ground.
3 days 4 weeks
04Body color
The paint that will actually be seen, put on in three sittings at the same hour of the day.
6 days 9 weeks
05Glazes
Two thin passes for the depth in the shadows. This is the step I get wrong when I am impatient.
2 days 13 weeks
06Varnish
Brushed on once the surface no longer moves under a thumb, then the work can leave.
12 h 3.9 months
Bare linen to varnish
Two weeks of it with a brush in my hand. The rest is the room doing the work, and it cannot be hurried without cracking the paint.
10.7 months
The studio
Doctor Erazo 84, third floor
Everything I am able to make is decided by this room and by the goods lift at the end of the corridor.
- Floor
- 62 m² One room, concrete, and nothing standing in the middle of it.
- Ceiling
- 4.1 m
- Long wall
- 9.4 m Boarded and painted flat white, so a canvas can lean anywhere along it.
- Light
- North, both ends About six usable hours in January and nine in May. I do not paint under bulbs.
- Door
- 1.05 × 2.10 m
- Goods lift
- 2.40 × 1.60 m The real limit. The stairs are a nine-turn spiral and have never been an option.
- In the building since
- 2016 Three floors up, above a printer and a shop that repairs sewing machines.
Largest work that leaves the building
240 × 400 cm
Anything bigger is painted in two panels that meet on a stretcher joint, and I say so on the label and take a hundred dollars off.
For sale
Available now
What is standing in the studio unsold. Everything is priced unframed.
Long room, Doctor Erazo
Oil on linen, 2026
210 × 300 cm
$16,500 Available
North window, noon
Oil on linen, 2026
180 × 145 cm
$9,800 Available
Stairwell, looking up
Oil on linen, 2025
200 × 112 cm
$8,400 Available
Blocked doorway
Oil on linen, 2024
190 × 142 cm
$9,200 On hold
Corner, study
Oil on board, 2024
60 × 45 cm
$2,100 Available
Back landing, study
Oil on board, 2023
55 × 41 cm
$1,850 Available
Kitchen at four
Oil on linen, 2024
120 × 160 cm
$8,900 Sold
Prices are for the unframed work and include crating and delivery anywhere in Mexico. A piece on hold is held for two weeks and no longer. Before you decide, I will send you a photograph of the painting hung on a wall the size of yours, which is the only honest way to do this at a distance.
Biography
Marisol Otero
I was born in Puebla in 1981 and have painted in Mexico City since I finished at La Esmeralda in 2011. For eight years I painted people, badly and then adequately, and then in 2019 a friend on the demolition survey let me into a building on Calle Doctor Lucio two weeks before it came down. I have not painted a person since.
Since then I have worked in nineteen buildings in Doctores, Obrera and Guerrero, always with permission and never for longer than the building has. I keep a plan chest of the studies that did not become anything; there are about two hundred of them and I look at them more than I look at the paintings.
Marisol Otero
- Born Puebla, 1981
- Based in Colonia Doctores, Mexico City
- Trained La Esmeralda, 2007 to 2011
- Represented by Galeria Nueve Sur, Mexico City
Record
Exhibitions and collections
Solo exhibitions
- 2026 The Last Month Galeria Nueve Sur, Mexico City
- 2024 Rooms in Doctores Casa Equis, Mexico City
- 2022 Chalk Sala Poniente, Puebla
Group exhibitions
- 2026 What the City Keeps Museo de la Ciudad, Mexico City
- 2025 Painting After the Survey Bienal Regional, Guadalajara
- 2024 Interior, Unoccupied Fundacion Arroyo, Monterrey
- 2023 Six Painters, One Street Espacio Bolivar, Mexico City
Residencies
- 2025 Winter studio Taller Norte, Oaxaca
- 2021 Painting residency Casa de la Cal, Puebla
Collections
- Coleccion Ruiz Bermudez Mexico City
- Fundacion Arroyo Monterrey
- Banco del Centro, corporate collection Mexico City
- Eleven private collections Mexico, the United States and Spain
Elsewhere
Prizes, press and talks
2026
- The painter who works to a demolition schedule
- Painting a room that will not exist next month
2025
- Painting prize, national selection
- Interiors, before the machines
2024
- Five painters to follow this year
- Working on site: permissions, dust and light
2023
- Acquisition prize
- A studio three floors above a sewing machine shop
Contact
Come and see one
A painting only tells the truth in a room. These are the days the studio is open.
Next open days
- Thursday 9 April Nine works standing, two of them still wet. Open
- Friday 17 April The whole of the 2026 series, before it is crated for the gallery. Almost full
- Thursday 30 April Small works and the plan chest of studies. Open
- Friday 8 May Collectors and curators. By invitation
Doctor Erazo 84, third floor, Colonia Doctores
Two days' notice, please. The lift is slow, the building has no bell, and I will send you the door code.
Thank you. I answer within two working days and will confirm the day and the door code.