Wazzup Pilipinas!
The heat is on for art events this February, National Arts Month, but more specifically for contemporary art. It’s been a while now that trendy Filipino artists have been getting hair-raising attention due in part to auction results. Credit however must be given to neophyte galleries--being in business for just a little over a decade and having made their presence felt in the local if not the international art market. Swanky art buyers have definitely outgrown in number the artists who kept alternative spaces alive at the turn of the century. Add to that an assortment of home-grown art fairs and what have you in the capital is a robust art scene indeed.
If contemporary art were to be defined as the territory of the young, emergent and experimental, then it would be inappropriate to classify as such the works of Manuel Ocampo whose large canvasses of laboriously loaded symbolism abound in an exhibition at Archivo 1984 Gallery in Makati. This painter is certainly no new kid on the block and has been around for a long time, nurtured early by the ruckus of California in the late 1980s. Many in the international art scene know him by his ascent to notoriety through participation in seminal exhibitions around 1992 namely Helter Skelter: L.A. Art in the 1990s, capped by the infamous exclusion of four of his canvasses at Dokumenta IX in Germany.
By 2003 Ocampo had already begun spreading his audacious subjects and maverick personality through collaborative and fun exhibitions with like-minded artists in Manila. His inclination to support his peers resulted in the curation of shows abroad representing a slice of youthful art from Manila and the opening of a gallery named the Department of Avant Garde Clichés in 2011. The art space was one among the few that provided a global reach to local audiences however short-lived. Nowadays, Ocampo is busier than ever in Europe preparing for, among other projects, his participation in the upcoming Venice Biennale in May this year.
Ross is known as the Pambansang Blogger ng Pilipinas - An Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Professional by profession and a Social Media Evangelist by heart.
