Manuel Ocampo

Gray Kapernekas Gallery is pleased to present an exhibition of new paintings by Manuel Ocampo, in his first solo exhibition in New York since 2000. Best known for his re-evalution of Colonial painting, Ocampo consistently incorporates sacred and secular imagery, political symbolism, and high/low cultural icons. Using imagery from art historical, religious, and political sources, Ocampo's pictures are Gothic and disturbing, iconic and provocative. Ocampo’s paintings’ content and style builds on allegorical traditions of Goya and Daumier, updated with contemporary references to the illustrator and political satirist R. Crumb and Modernist painter Philip Guston, wit h line foregrounding muddied and dripping abstraction.

The focus of the exhibition is the monumental painting, A Defeatist Monument to the Divine Misery of the Grand Narrative in the Theatrical Arena of Modernist Object-Making (2006). As its epic title describes, Monument depicts a dramatic cavalcade of anthropomorphized tree stumps and sacks bringing two comic-like figures—the Collector and the Critic—to the Art Object, a large pile of feces on a pedestal, surrounded by coins, tools, and dripping fluids. The tension between audience/patron and object/artist comes to life in the grand scale of the painting, and, in effect, equalizes all of the players. Scatological imagery resurfaces in two other paintings in the exhibition, Kitsch Recovery Effort 1 and 2 (2006), which illustrate the unearthing of the Artist and the crucifixion of the Artist. Based in Manilla, Phillipines and Berkeley, California, Manuel Ocampo has 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. His work has been included in a number of international surveys, including the 2004 Seville Biennale, 2001 Venice Biennale, the 2001 Berlin Biennale, the 2000 Biennale d’art Contemporain de Lyon, the 1997 Kwangju Biennial, the 1993 Corcoran Biennial, and 1992’s controversial Documenta IX. His work was featured in many group shows in the 1990s, including Helter Skelter: LA Art of the 1990s, at MoCA, Los Angeles in 1992; Asia/America: Identities in Contemporary Asian American Art at the Asia Society, New York in 1994; American Stories: Amidst Displacement and Transformation at Setagaya Art Museum, Tokyo in 1997; Pop Surrealism at the Aldrich Museum of Art in 1998; and Made in California: Art, Image, and Identity, 1900-2000 at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 2000. He has received a number of prestigious grants and awards, including the Giverny Residency (1998), the Rome Prize at the American Academy (1995-96), National Endowment for the Arts (1996), Pollock-Krasner Foundation (1995) and Art Matters Inc. (1991).

Manuel Ocampo,
Gray Kapernekas Gallery