Feature

Manuel Ocampo

Artist

Manuel Ocampo's (born 1965) work fuses sacred Baroque religious iconography with the secular and serious political narrative. His works that draw upon a wide range of art history contains cartoonish elements and inspiration from the punk subculture.

Manuel Ocampo was born in the Philippines. He studied fine arts of the University of the Philippines, then moved to Los Angeles, California in the 1980s, where he studied at the California State University. Ocampo has since moved to Seville, Spain.

Ocampo frequently revisits and makes reference to the art historical canon of political allegorists including Leon Golub, Gericault, Goya, Daumier with allusions to contemporary figures including political satirist R. Crumb Modernist painter Philip Guston. Ocampo's dark, often disturbing Gothic paintings are attributed with transforming horror into exquisite beauty, history into art history, purgatory into salvation. One of his pieces featuring several swastikas was censored at the Dokumenta art show in Kassel, Germany.

Manuel Ocampo exhibited extensively throughout the 1990s, with solo exhibitions at galleries and institutions through Europe, Asia, and the Americas. In 2005, his work was the subject of a large-scale survey at Casa Asia in Barcelona, and Lieu d�Art Contemporain, Sigean, France.

It is important to note that Manuel Ocampo used to make art that criticized western colonialism through allegory and metaphor. Today, his work displays simple imagery and as the artist has stated "I was bored with that shit" about his 90s artwork. Recently Phillip Rodriguez directed a one-hour documentary of Ocampo's life and art career, Manuel Ocampo, God Is My Copilot.

ManuelOcampo.org

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September 22, 2010 @ The Milk Bar,
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Julie Plug, The Skyflakes, Sugarspun

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