MANUEL OCAMPO

SHE HAS A HOT ASS: THE DEMYSTIFICATION OF ART AND ITS INCORPORATION INTO THE PRACTICE OF EVERYDAY LIFE COULD ONLY BE ACHIEVED THROUGH THE DELIBERATE LOWERING OF STANDARDS

The publication published for the exhibition presenting a new performance installation work by internationally acclaimed Philippine painter Manuel Ocampo contains images of works by the artist.

In this installation created especially for Gertrude Contemporary entitled “She has a Hot Ass: The Demystification of Art and its Incorporation Into the Practice of Everyday Life Could only be Achieved Through the Deliberate Lowering of Standards” Ocampo invited a local tattoo artist to transform his sketches into permanent tattoos.

Typically Ocampo’s work presents a pictorial collision of socio-political positions. In his paintings devotional symbols have often jostled beside commercial or corporate icons, pointedly deflating the efficacy of emblematic systems of power. Incorporating references as diverse as Jesus, Swastikas, cockroaches and even Snoopy, Ocampo’s paintings have offered a crowded, cynical and heavily ironic slant oncontemporary post-colonial culture.

In this work, Ocampo drew on what is perhaps art history’s most illustrious example of playful disruption. Marcel Duchamp’s childish defacing of a post card size reproduction of the Mona Lisa, with the L.H.O.O.Q, which phonetically makes the phrase, “she has a hot ass.” As with Duchamp’s moustache and graffittied pun, Ocampo’s sketches appear childlike, unfinished and imperfect.

In this way Ocampo drew attention to ideas of permanence in high art, and the fickleness of the artworld. This work continued Ocampo’s interest in the systematic devaluation of meaning and political postulations in his work, which he managed through the colliding, debasing and normalizing of his varied subject matter. In this remarkable work, visitors to the gallery during the exhibition were presented with the opportunity to be inscribed with one of Ocampo’s works. This pointed gesture acted to not only democratise the art object, but ultimately to test the viewers’ genuine commitment to Ocampo’s creative project.

Ocampo has been exhibiting internationally for the past 15 years. He is represented in Australia by Uplands Gallery, Melbourne

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