Manuel Ocampo: iconoclasm personified Artist At Work By PAM BROOKE A. CASIN January 31, 2010, 1:19pm Manila Bulletin

Manuel Ocampo

Nazi Swastikas. Crosses. Syringes. Drugs. Devils. Rats. Feces. Skulls. Sausages. Eyeballs. White-robed Ku Klux Klansman.

Sounds like an apocalyptic and deathly shopping list a veritable punk would write, one who is unapologetically cool, scatological, and downright rebellious. Or a free verse poem perhaps, enumerating some shocking and ugly things meant to disrupt the infectious “happy complacency” we all unnaturally feel at some point. But actually, these are the ‘punk’ images of visual artist and iconoclast Manuel Ocampo, who is known in the art scene, both here and abroad, for his critical pieces that combine opposing elements and create messy yet inspired possibilities.

Based on his artworks alone, one might dismiss Ocampo as this weird and brooding guy, who revels in silence, just sits in one corner without a care in the world, or wears ripped black clothing held together by safety pins or tape. How very cliché! In reality, Ocampo exudes a warm and friendly persona. Those who spoke and judged too soon will be surprised that the artist is not the spitting image of his oil works. However, one can very much guess where the artist’s sensibilities came from. Unique (although Ocampo might say otherwise, teasing us that it is the time of piracy and that he just copies works from other artists) and very cartoon-like, the artist’s sinister and mocking aesthetics are deeply rooted in the punk subculture that he had been accustomed to.

Before finishing fine arts in the University of the Philippines and still in his teens, Ocampo migrated to the United States, resumed his studies at the California State University, and found himself becoming aware of the ethos of the punks. Growing up in

California, Ocampo became steeped in the vocabulary and the do-it-yourself, anti-rule attitude of said subculture. In retrospect also, the artist thinks his dark-humored works might have been the result of his being the ‘other’ and the ‘marginalized’ in his environment.

“Being in the States, I didn’t fit in. I didn’t look like anybody else. I felt like shit. And so I associated myself with the ‘dregs of society’ and started hanging around with nonconformists, and these were people from the underground,” Ocampo relates.

“But I don’t particularly see my works as dark. I just see them as different sides to a story. Now, I want my pieces to be lighter. I’m thinking of painting Madonna and Child, flowers, and landscapes.”

Ocampo doing landscapes and blooms? That’s like Salvador Dali sans his haughtiness and infamous upturned waxed mustache or Rene Magritte without his pictorial talismans of apples and bowler hats. “And I’m not being sarcastic. I’m trying to find a way wherein it’s still possible to do that. I’m looking for a different sort of route to make something like that and make it contemporary. That’s the challenge,” Ocampo explains.

During our conversation, Ocampo is, by turns, funny, witty, cerebral, frank, and charmingly disarming. Equipped with typical Pinoy humor, he tells us that the ‘darkness’ in his opuses accounts for his inclination to paint at night. He swears by Yoyoy Villame’s music. He says that he had originally wanted to be a comic book artist or writer but as he can’t keep his stories straight, he ventured into painting instead. He vehemently denies critiquing painting and aesthetics by way of painting when his art, in a particular sense, does the very same thing. “It seems moralistic and pretentious. Maybe I’m just exploring certain things but not critiquing,” he offers.

When asked why his earlier pieces had been peppered with swastikas (one of his swastika-filled pieces got censored at the Dokumenta show in Kassel, Germany), he exclaims, “I’m just trying to be cool.” He complains that this author asks such hard questions when his answers are just some of the most profound and mind-boggling aphorisms and elucidations this writer has heard in a very long time. And so while Ocampo dismisses his works as this unintimidating artful play of his mind’s eye, one but cannot help to see them as something more than what the pictures imply. The thing with an Ocampo work is that you tend to seek the multiple meanings and discourse running beyond its surface because you’d know there are stories waiting to be uncovered.

Adding difficulty to deciphering Ocampo’s bold and controversial oeuvre is his stylistic leaning to collage and assemble opposing elements. The artist valiantly puts cultural references and religious iconography in one plane, making his pieces ambiguous and, to borrow Alice Guillermo’s description, “blasphemous” in many counts.

“I was doing that kind of imagery within a certain context of time and place. In the late ‘80s, there were many artists of color who became visible in the scene and their vocabulary came from their culture. Multiculturalism gained popularity,” he shares. “Now, in the states, ‘yung trabaho ng mga puti nagiging stale naman. Gusto mo naman ng ibang storya at ibang patawa…nandoon ako sa wave na ‘yun. My works are actually a reaction to multiculturalism. They were just jabbing and poking fun at the movement. Let’s just say that if the artists of color are reacting to the whites, I was just reacting to the artists of color reacting to the whites.”

Aside from exploration, Ocampo simply puts his tendency to “critique” as a medium of creating conversation. “Kumbaga sa Facebook o Multiply, meron kang comment. Siguro ganun lang ‘yung art ko, isa siyang komento. ‘Yung maglalagay ka ng ‘Ayus ‘yan ah!’ o ‘Astig!’” he quips. True enough, Ocampo’s creative process thrives on discourse and dialogue with other artists. He gets impetus by looking at books and by looking at other artists’ works. At times, Ocampo just waits for somebody who will flick ‘his’ switch.

“The worst thing you can do is to make a boring work and I’m sort of boring,” Ocampo muses. “If my personality is in my works then they become boring. I try to make it exciting for myself that’s why I always take cues from someone or something outside of myself. I can’t really call myself an original.”

These days, Ocampo takes cues from Takashi Nemoto, an underground comic book artist working since the ‘80s who humorously deals with a lot of perversities in today’s society. Tales of an anthropomorphized sperm (a mutated sperm brought to life by radioactivity) and an old guy whose sexual practices got the better of him, among others, can now be found in Ocampo’s recent visual ruminations. “Parang nagiging storyboard na lang ‘yung mga gawa ko ngayon,” Ocampo adds. At worst, Ocampo’s works may be seen as just tackling squalid and sexual subject matter. At best, his irreverent pieces provide direct and I-don’t-give-a-damn insight about everyday life.

“Lumaki kami noong panahon ng diktadurya, kailangan itago mo ‘yung totoong ikaw eh. Ayaw naman naming maging ipokrito…magsisimba kunwari pero masama naman ang ugali,” Ocampo explains of his inclination towards ‘toilet humor.’ “Doon lang din namin nailalabas sa painting ‘yung ganun. But it’s all a language. It doesn’t really mean that I’m violent or a maniac just because one of my paintings depict violence or perversity. I see my art as a continuation of certain art forms that I’m attracted to—Dadaism, surrealism, and abstract expressionism.”

And what does this iconoclast and visual provocateur get from creating art? He says, ‘Ito lang ang alam kong gawin eh so ‘yung satisfaction ko is the satisfaction of doing something. Hindi lang ‘yung nakatunganga ka. I’d rather be idle and drink beer, but of course that won’t make you happy. It’s not a convincing way of making yourself feel

useful. You need to do something in order for you to feel alive. It’s a certain appropriation of your existence, that’s why. I’d like to teach sometime too…”

A picture comes into mind. Ocampo becomes this menacing and badass guy in his chaotic studio in Marikina when painting, wielding his brush to a nihilistic rhythm that only revels in being entirely different and real without really trying too hard.

http://www.mb.com.ph/articles/241103/manuel-ocampo-iconoclasm-personified