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Manuel Ocampo at Paule Anglim

Art in America, June, 2003 by Mark Van Proyen

There were nine new paintings in Manuel Ocampo's recent exhibition, and the majority were painted in a ghostly aqua-tinged grisaille that conveys a dreamy and introspective reticence. As with the artist's more expressionistic earlier work, these large oil-on-canvas compositions teem with cartoon monstrosities and ominous pictograms, frequently including crucifixions, swastikas and crude, quasi-racist graffiti. Different, however, is Ocampo's shift in the direction of a subdued lyricism, stemming from soft-edged, low contrast shapes and running the gamut from the blithely bittersweet to comedy of a dark, ironic flavor.

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In several of the new works, Ocampo scraped away areas of paint in a manner suggesting the arbitrary disintegration of layered billboards or the cumulative wear and tear that time metes out to ancient paintings. For example, in Tu Tambien Esturas de Moda (duck and dinosaur), 2002, there is a sizable zone of exposed canvas at the middle of the composition where paint has been abruptly pulled up. This bluntly material technique has the effect of making the other elements of the image seem more psychologically distant, even as their cartoonish articulation works to return them to the foreground of the viewer's awareness. This formal/psychological interplay seems closer to the core of the work's meaning than does the portrayed vignette of a drunken reptile being awakened and rebuked by a grimacing duck.

Occasionally, the figurative elements turn out to represent familiar historical personages. In Don't Give Them Any Puzzles to Think On/Social Subjects Presented as Enigmatic Hieroglyphs Given the Authority of the Crypt (2002), we find a graffito-like articulation of the devil-horned, disembodied head of Karl Marx perched atop a thick book in the lower right corner of the composition; a pair of chained fists holding chicken legs reach upward at the left. Additional, less distinct images include a variety of religious symbols and a sneering, astigmatic insect wearing a jaunty top hat. These elements are arrayed more or less equidistant from each other, rather like the stalemated pieces of a half-played game of fantastical chess. Marking our moment as one paralyzed at an ideological impasse generated by an out-of-control media stream, this work did a fine job of illustrating "The Inadequacy of Struggle Against The Inadequacy of Struggle"--the thematic title which Ocampo gave to this absorbing exhibition.

Manuel Ocampo at Paule Anglim

Art in America, June, 2003 by Mark Van Proyen

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