MANILA, Philippines - These paintings, this imagery,” insists Manuel Ocampo in the God is my Copilot documentary, “they didn’t come from nowhere; they came from a tradition.”
Ocampo was born in the Philippines in the mid-’60s, moved to the States in ’86, infiltrated the Los Angeles art scene in the early ’90s (with solo shows in LA and New York, group shows like “Helter Skelter” in the Museum of Contemporary Art in LA, as well as back-to-back shows with the likes of Jean-Michel Basquiat and Don Ed Hardy, more shows in Spain, Germany and Italy), and returned to the Philippines four years ago. He is the country’s most acclaimed artist here and abroad, featured in magazines such as Artforum and Art in America, books such as Vitamin P and Art Now, and cited by everyone from American artists Camille Rose Garcia and Liz McGrath to contemporary young Filipino artists such as Louie Cordero and Robert Langenegger, et al, as an overarching influence.
And his work is the fruit of a rich pictorial tradition and regurgitation of history (his response to it and oftentimes his rebellion against it) — Christian iconography, baroque imagery, kitsch art, Spanish colonialism, you name it. Everything is borne from a series of ruminations and inquiries aimed at creating “work that is part of the discourse surrounding what’s happening in art at the moment.” The pictures are not just about some random bull.
Here is the gospel according to Manuel J. Ocampo (culled from text on paintings, oracular titles and assorted pronouncements):
• “Artistic laws demand their own destruction.”
• “Lack of originality is made up for by craftsmanship.”
• “The failure to express is its own expression.”
• “Objective criticality in paintings only merits indifference from a culture that craves instant gratification.”
• “Art has gone through phases of development that it no longer needs to repeat.”
• “Everything is purged from this painting but art.”
• “Identity is your own worst enemy.”
• “I am nothing other than someone else’s idea of myself.”