Manuel Ocampo

Description

I see my current work as having no explanation (or one hasn't emerged yet). Rather than lacking an explanation, it does not need one, because the work exists without it. The whole theoretical routine of making meaning to one's work is similar to searching for a genie in a bottle. Its prison logic is tantamount to exorcising the ghosts squatting in intestinal mishaps. It makes me wince. Better try covering your nose from ghosts poops. No theory about why one has to lock oneself in a room to constantly jab at the mute opposition of wet and coagulated pigmented pastes has yet emerged (I'm improvising it, almost). Yet the paintings are appearing for all that, discoveries go on being made, and I see no need for a reason.

Maybe I take it that the creation of a painting, like that of a child has its own inherent meaning. A painting grows out of a tradition, historical but also personal. It grows out of something; it is the consequence of a host of factors. It would be enough to stand in front of it and read it. I believe that the meaning is created along with the painting. I can perform

my own reading and recreate a precise meaning ... but I can't be bothered to. I don't see it as being necessary. I take it that these creatures of mine have their reasons to be here. One could debate this instinctual, naturalist or creationist theory at length ... but we will fall into a somnambulistic state of miserable oblivion.

Painting, after all is a Zombie medium. Usually, the art that I make is a by product of whatever's left in the refrigerator after a night of courageous gluttony and alcoholic dependency, with in and out bouts into the toilet. Sometimes I never quite make it there and I just stare at whatever's dribbling off my mouth and posterior lyrically dripping all-over the

Suprematist tiled floor. White on White? Not anymore. Brown is the new white.

Here we have a crossover of mutually opposed activities and factors: on the one hand, a steady and stubborn stream of nutty images, on the other a clumping of content that can immediately be constipated as an amalgamation of praxis (painting/shitting) and theory (how to put food in the tummy), between representation (how to sit comfortably on the toilet) and reflection (what to read in the toilet: ARTBOR'UM or FLUSH ART). From the structuring of different shapes and the process of experiencing juxtaposed and opposed forms emerges a new being - hopefully somewhat artistic - within which to unfold and formulate myself and do it all-over again. What is paradoxical about this 'artistic' body, however, is its dependency upon other spatial formations, both in its formulation and its reading.

My method consists primarily in presenting the cross-breeding of these factors as a fundamental dialectic condition. They oscillate between pole and bipole, from Mouth to Anus. Both are conjoined, even mutually interdependent, in what might be called a production of artistic proportions. Sounds like shit in a can to me. One can see then that painting in my work asserts a marked conceptual utilization. This holds true for painting as well as for diarrhea, which interbreeds references of a textual(content) and visual(tactile/haptic) nature with the personal and autonomous.

Here the expressive plays a not insignificant role, partly, through its traditional position as a sign of subjectivity, where the farty brushstroke expresses the "inner" and the "soulful". Look at Pollock who seems to be the epitome of the expressive, subjective artist. Pollock "drips" his paintings, an ultimately subjective form which actually leads to a disappearance of the subjective. Boy, what a relief! This obnoxious or rather ostentatious self-indulgence can be likened to the Freeing of Aesthetic Pleasure. This sits next to Kant's idea of aesthetic pleasure: freeing it from all moral justification, but also from the "sensuous" satisfaction of needs.

Yes, just let it all out. Art doesn't need justification and "Artists shouldn't be Stooges to their ideas". Aesthetic pleasure is based on enjoyment from that which does not let itself be recognized or identified. Such pleasure arises not in direct confrontation with an object, in our rationally or sensuosly testing its qualities, but in our reflective recourse or return to the process of experiencing the object. In other words, it is The Return of the Thing as the Thing Itself. As in that Thing which you try to flush down but keeps coming back and exclaiming, "I Shall Return!" Well isn't that Painting?

Biography

Manuel Ocampo

1965 born in Quezon City (Philippines)

lives and works in Marikina City (Philippines)

1984 University of the Philippines, Quezon City (RP)

1985 California State University, Bakersfield (USA)

Solo exhibitions, projects (2000-2010, selection)

2011

Galerie Zimmermann Kratochwill, Graz (Austria)
The Ghost Poop of Painting, philara - Sammlung zeitgenössischer Kunst, Düsseldorf (Germany)
Contemporary Psychology and The Theoretical Steroid Defiled Modernist Chicken, SOD Space of Drawings, Marie Kirkegaard, Copenhagen (Denmark)
Rebels of abstraction and the ghost poo of painting, adhoc galleria, Vigo (Spain)

KalimanRawlins Art Gallery, Melbourne (Australia)

Terrible Beauty: Art, Crisis, Change & The Office of Non-Compliance, Dublin Contemporary, Dublin (Ireland)

2010

An exhibition of collaborations with 7 imaginary friends showing a variety of painterly mishaps flaunted as majestic embellishments, Nosbaum & Reding - Art Contemporain, Luxembourg (L)

An Arcane Recipe of Cannibalized Ingredients Taken from the Reliquaries of Some Profane Illumination, Tyler Rollins Fine Art, New York City/New York (USA)

2009

Monuments to the Institutional Critique of Myself, Pablo Gallery, Manila (RP)

Painting as an Attempt to Memorialize Reality’s Triumph over Art , Galerie Nathalie Obadia, Brussels (B)

Papier, Galerie Baerbel Graesslin, Frankfurt (D)

Manuel Ocampo, Bongoût, Berlin (D)

2008

Manuel Ocampo: The tragicomic Gravitational Destiny of the Conscious Stricken World..., Uplands Gallery, Melbourne (AUS)

Guided by Sausage, Galeria Tomas March, Valencia (ES)

2007

Guided by Sausage, Le (9) bis, Saint-Etienne (F)

Kitsch Recovery Program, Lizabeth Oliveria Gallery, Los Angeles/California (USA)

2006

En El Cielo No Hay Cerveza sin Alcohol, with Curro Gonzalez, Galeria Adhoc, Vigo (ES)

Down with Reality, Galerie Jesco von Puttkamer, Berlin (D)

Kitsch Recovery Program: An Image is Just a Pathetic Attempt to do Justice to a Picture, Nosbaum & Reding - Art Contemporain, Luxembourg (L)

No System Can Give the Masses the Proper Social Graces, with Damien Deroubaix, Haptic at La Maison Rouge, Paris (F)

Manuel Ocampo, Venetia Kapernekas Gallery, New York City/New York (USA)

2005

The Holocaustic Spackle in the Murals of the Quixotic Inseminators, Lizabeth Oliveria Gallery, Los Angeles/California (USA)

Bastards of Misrepresentation, Casa Asia, Barcelona (ES)

Manuel Ocampo, New Works, LAC, Lieu d’Art Contemporain, Sigean (F)

2004

Bastards, Galerie Baerbel Graesslin, Frankfurt (D)

Miserable Intentions, with Gaston Damag, Nosbaum & Reding - Art Contemporain, Luxembourg (L)

2003

Manuel Ocampo, Sprüth Magers Projekte, Munich (DE)

Wunderkammer, Gesellschaft Für Gegenwartskunst, Augsburg (D)

2002

An All Out Attempt at Transcendence, Galerie Baerbel Graesslin, Frankfurt (D)

Comprehensible Only to a Few Initiates, Galerie Nathalie Obadia, Paris (F)

The Inadequacy of the Struggle Against the Inadequacy of the Struggle, Gallery Paule Anglim, San Francisco/California (USA)

2001

Presenting the Undisclosed System of References in the Loophole of Misunderstanding, Galeria OMR, Mexico City (MEX)

Free Aesthetic Pleasure Now!, Babilonia 1808, Berkeley/California (USA)

2000

Those Long Dormant Pimples of Inattention Counterattacking the Hyper-Convoluted Dramas of the Gaze, Sprüth Magers Projekte, Munich, Galerie Baerbel Grasslin, Frankfurt (D)

Those Long Dormant Pimples of Inattention Meandering through the Cranium Arcade of Pitiless Logic Swastikating between Love and Hate, Jack Shainman Gallery, New York (USA)

Group exhibitions (2000-2010, selection)

2009

The making of Art, Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt (D)

2008

Problems with style, Green Papaya Art Project, Manila (RP)

In the context of: La dégelée Rabelais, organised by FRAC Languedoc-Roussillon, (F):

Morts de rire, La Panacée, Montpellier (F)

Et tout pour les mange-tripes!, Musée Pierre André Benoit & Espace de Rochebelle, Alès (F)

A Thélème, Priape s’est cogné…,CIRCA - La Chartreuse, Villeneuve-les-Avignon (F)

2007

Rooms, Conversations, Frac Île-de-France, Le Plateau, Paris (F)

L’Explosition, Frac Languedoc-Roussillon, Montpellier (F)

Die Kunst zu sammeln (The art of collecting), Museum Kunst Palast, Duesseldorf (D)

2006

Five Stories High, Track 16 Gallery, Santa Monica/CA (USA)

Painting Codes, Galeria Comunale d’Arte Contemporanea di Monfalcone (I)

Goetz meets Falckenberg, Phoenix Kulturstiftung, Hamburg (D)

2004

BIACS 1, First International Biennal of Eontemporary Art of Seville, curated by Harald Szeemann, La Alegria de mi Sueños, Centro Andaluz de Arte Contemporanea, Seville (ES)

2003

End of the Start, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco (USA)

2002

Extranjeros: Los Otros Artistas Españoles, Museo de Arte Contemporaneo Esteban Vicente, Segovia (ES)

Disarming Parables: Collection Highlights, San Jose Museum of Art, San Jose/CA (USA)

2001

La Biennale di Venezia, 49. Esposizione Internazionale, Plateau of Mankind Venice (I) (catalogue)

Berlin Biennale II, Berlin (D) (catalogue)

Vom Eindruck zum Ausdruck (From impression to expression) : Graesslin Collection, Deichtorhallen, Hamburg (D) (catalogue)

Contemporary Devotion, San Jose Museum of Art, San Jose/CA (USA)

Circos globulos: Selected works from the Babilonia Wilner Collection, Babilonia 1808, Berkeley/CA (USA)

2000

Made in California: Art, Image, and Identity. 1900-2000, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles (USA) (catalogue)

Faith: The Impact of Judeo-Christian Religion on Art at the Millenium, The Aldrich Museum, Ridgefield/CA (USA) (catalogue)

5th Biennale d’Art Contemporain de Lyon, Partage d’Exotismes, Lyon (F)

The Sensational Line, Museum of Contemporary Art, Denver (USA)