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Francesco
Clemente | Robert Colescott |
Roy DeForest | Gronk |
Tim Hawinson | Yayoi Kusama Elizabeth Murray | Manuel Ocampo |Paul Weisz-Carrington,M.D. | Karena A. Karras Niki deSaint Phalle | Kiki Smith | Marta Thoma |
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Manuel Ocampo: Biography |
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“Ocampo's imagery manages
to be simultaneously ugly and beautiful, as though to echo an internal
culture clash. Born in the Philippines, he moved to Seattle when
he was in his teens and then studied art at CSU Bakersfield. His
work embodies the inherent conflicts of a Filipino immigrant. by Kathy Zimmerer on an exhibition by Manuel Ocampo |
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While growing up in the Philippines, Ocampo found work as a painter working for the Church. His skill and talent was put to work painting religious themes on moral issues that were sold by the Church. They were painted to look antique in order to appear more valuable as antique artwork. After Ocampo moved to California and was in art school, he took what he had learned and applied the style and painting technique to personal and political issues, making very original and intriguing artwork. Like the dramatic religious paintings he had been taught to paint, his new artwork depicted bloody scenes of violence, but the violence told the story of colonial conquest, nazi horror, and the ku klux klan. His paintings made in the 1990s look old and slightly damaged, as if they had been retrieved from an ancient site of ruins. It is as if Ocampo made up a fantasy past life about these paintings, where they tell stories about recent history, but they were dug up from ages ago. The colors, the composition, and the painting style are lovely in their beauty, at the same time you are punched with a message about violence and destruction. With this seductive technique, he makes the point that these paintings are as if pulled from ruins, a world culture that is in ruins, rife with war and terrible violence. "The ambiguity
of Ocampo's paintings is part of their sophistication. As confrontational
and vehement as they are, they point to no conclusion, nor do they
even encourage us to take literally the overt references they contain...I
believe that what we experience as their perverse beauty is their
liberating psychic effect."
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