About the Artwork
Untitled brings together culled motifs and texts that have been distinguishing features of artist Manuel Ocampo’s oeuvre. In particular, the rendering of a cartoonish vulture serves as an ambiguous metaphor of the immigrant in a psychosocial limbo, as the artist regards himself. He is interested in how we encounter and read images today, and how we attempt to account for their materiality, objectivity, and operation in the global culture of image production and consumption. The boundless gathering of images is central to his work, and their sources are diverse; freely combining and undermining culturally loaded symbols, they accumulate allegorical layers and operate in the world as a simulation, spectacle, parody or pastiche.

About the Artist
Multiple award-winning painter Manuel Ocampo (b. 1965, Philippines) is known for his frequent and strategic stylistic drifts in response to new contexts and subject matter. His shows are often constructed around contradictory tendencies, elaborating discrepancies between what a painting appears to be and how it behaves in relation to the structures that legitimate its appearance. He always embraces sudden shifts of style and emphasis. He paints, but doubt is created as to whether any particular medium is the solution.

The artist has been a vital presence on the international art scene for over two decades now; his works were presented in two of the most important European art events, Documenta IX (1992) and the Venice Biennale (1993). In the early 1990s, he participated in the iconic exhibition Helter Skelter: L.A. Art in the 1990s at The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (1992).