LA II (Angel Ortiz)

Angel Ortiz, who writes as LA II — Little Angel Two — was born in New York in 1967 and grew up on the Lower East Side. He began tagging as a child, and by twelve or thirteen his name was among the most persistent on the walls of his neighbourhood. In 1980 Keith Haring, then newly arrived and looking for the writer whose tag he kept encountering, sought him out. Ortiz was thirteen.

The collaboration that followed produced several hundred works over roughly four years. Haring's figures and Ortiz's dense, rhythmic calligraphy were applied to the same surfaces — canvases, sculptures, vases, furniture, walls — in a genuine two-handed practice rather than a decoration of one artist's work by another. LA II's contribution is immediately identifiable: an all-over lattice of interlocking letterforms, tight and fast, that fills every interval Haring's line leaves open. The two exhibited together at Tony Shafrazi Gallery in 1982, at Fun Gallery and Galerie Watari, Tokyo, in 1983, and internationally thereafter.

His own work continues that language without the figures. The marks are made at speed with marker and spray in black on white or in high colour, building surfaces of pure lettering that read as pattern before they read as text. The practice has stayed close to its origin: it is still, structurally, tagging, done at any scale and on any object.

The relationship with Haring, and with the market that formed around Haring after his death in 1990, has been a difficult one, and Ortiz's role in the joint works was for a long period under-recognised. That has changed in recent years, and the collaborative pieces are now generally catalogued as the work of two artists.

He has continued to exhibit in New York and internationally, including Ode 2 NYC at Chase Contemporary in New York in 2023 and King of Hearts at D'Stassi Art in London in 2022, and was included in Future Primeval at the Queens Museum in 1990.

SELECTED CV

Born 1967, New York, NY, USA

Lives and works in New York, NY, USA

Selected Solo Exhibitions

2023 Chase Contemporary, New York, NY, USA

2022 King of Hearts, D’Stassi Art, London, United Kingdom

2011 Dorian Grey Gallery, New York, NY, USA

2005 Galleria Leonardo, Bolzano, Italy

2001 Follin Gallery, New York, NY, USA

Selected Group Exhibitions

2024 The Great Collaborator, D’Stassi Art, London, United Kingdom

2003 LA II & Keith Haring: Due amici a New York, Italy

2002 Clayton Patterson Outlaw Museum, New York, NY, USA

1983 Keith Haring and LA II, Fun Gallery, New York, NY, USA

1983 Keith Haring and LA II, Galerie Watari, Tokyo, Japan

1983 Robert Fraser Gallery, London, United Kingdom

1982 Keith Haring and LA II, Tony Shafrazi Gallery, New York, NY, USA

Museum and Institutional Exhibitions

1990 Future Primeval, Queens Museum, New York, NY, USA

Biennials, Triennials and Art Fairs

2004 Scope Art Fair, Los Angeles, CA, USA

Selected Public Commissions and Projects

1983 Fiorucci Walls, Site-specific work with Keith Haring, Fiorucci, Milan, Italy

1990 Special Projects Paint Fiorucci, With Keith Haring, Milan, Italy