Features, Reviews & Coverage
Press
Recent Coverage
Compound Contemporary
Ended Summer
Group exhibition featuring Risk, WRDSMTH, Plastic Jesus, Shepard Fairey, and Johnny Otto.
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Publications
Art Squat Magazine
Magazine Launch — May 2021
May 2021 marks the launch of Johnny Otto's Art Squat Magazine with the help of fellow writers Julia Annabel Siedenburg and Laura Siebold. It features both local and international artists from a wide range of disciplines.
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Art Reveal Magazine
Beneath The Darkness
"Maybe the whole point of Otto's work is to say that the battle between the darker forces and the lighter forces is never really over… That question is what makes these new paintings so important, especially now, when, as a world that is in turmoil, we need to ask some very difficult questions about what it means to be human."
— Charlie Aniston
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Project Angel Food
Angel Auction 2020
The annual Angel Awards reimagined for 2020 as the Angel Auction and Evening of Gratitude & Song, featuring an online auction and livestreamed event with celebrity supporters and musical guests.
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Art Reveal Magazine
Otto vs. Basquiat
"Otto is not trying to be the next Basquiat and tries to avoid discussions on the matter altogether, insisting that his interest is to fight Basquiat's imposing legacy and to create an aesthetic identity and painterly legacy entirely and unapologetically his own."
— Charlie Anison, Art Reveal Magazine
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Shoutout LA
Johnny Otto — Writer, Director
"Risk is everything. You have zero percent chance of reaching any level of success without risk… I risk my time all the time."Read Feature →
Left Bank Magazine
Seen: Ottophobia
"An Artist needs to be a lion. Wild and free. When I paint, I don't worry about what people might think of my work or how they might categorize it… I just paint for the love of painting. Madly and unimpeded."Read Article →
Deborah Kobylt Live — Podcast
Filmmaker, Photographer & Artist
The journey of the artist — Johnny Otto on art, charity, and the importance of creativity in reflecting the world around us.
Watch on YouTube →Archive
LA Weekly
One Artist's Quest to Quench the Thirst of Water & Spirit
"He, like many others in these troubled times, is further compelled to use his talent and luck in service to others. So when his major new solo show, Water & Spirit — his first in nearly 13 years — opens this weekend in Hollywood, expect something special."
— Shana Nys Dambrot, LA Weekly
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VoyageLA
Meet Johnny Otto — Ottophobia, Hollywood
"I knew from that day forward that I wanted to do things with my art that would bring positive change to the world. I wanted to give back."
— Johnny Otto, VoyageLA Magazine
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Art Reveal Magazine
Water & Spirit Show at Radiant Space
"Grand. Vibrant. Aggressive. Powerful. Otto's new paintings are sure to stir up a great deal of conversation and excitement… His figures seem to be in constant motion. They dance around their space — as limited as it might be to a canvas on the wall — they are free."Read Article →
Art Reveal Magazine
Jeff Hamilton's Street Art Fair
"Leading this talented group of Artists was the primitive art of Basquiat-reincarnated, Johnny Otto. His massive work, stretched out over three 10' tall walls, is at once primitive, but also definitively contemporary."Read Article →
Art Reveal Magazine
Johnny Otto / Ottophobia — Conspiracy Propaganda Art
"Indecipherable things come out of you as you create something new and then you search your entire life to find a reason why… We all have our masks that we present to the world. Our faces. What's behind them?"Read Article →
LA Weekly
Squatter's Rites
"Commandeer the empty site, run extension cords from your pad into the space and create an art collective, of course."
— J.V. McAuley, LA Weekly. The original Art Squat show — the event that started it all.
Los Angeles Times
Angel Art '93 — Project Angel Food
Project Angel Food netted $275,000 at the Pacific Design Center. The Angel Art '93 benefit, an art and photography auction, was hosted by Herb Ritts, Robert Graham, Richard Meier, and David Hockney. The event, emceed by Lily Tomlin, commemorated artists who have died from AIDS.
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Splash Magazines
An Evening of Art at the Ashley Paige Hollywood Gallery
Swimsuit designer Ashley Paige hosted an exclusive art show exhibiting the works of filmmaker and abstract artist Johnny Otto alongside muralist Annie Preece and Russian photographer Yuri Sountsov, on Sunset Blvd.
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MovieMaker Magazine
Slimdunce — Johnny Otto & Self-Distribution
Armed with only a suitcase and a few hundred bucks, Otto took off for Los Angeles in 1990. This fall, Otto premieres "Slimdunce" — seven short films, all shot in one day a week for seven consecutive weeks, described as "the single most amazing thing" he has created to date.
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