Allegro Print, Singapore, 2019.
Responding to a global culture of image production and consumption in flux, Manuel Ocampo’s often chaotic and violent compositions present interactions between image-forms of a fragmented time and space, recalling the spectres of history, of painting, and of oneself.
Concerned with questions of identity and versions of culture, Ocampo’s works become dimensional screens of symbols and signs that are at once familiar and arbitrary; where humour bathes itself in a certain darkness, and darkness manifests itself in a certain comfort.
This distinct visual language is furthered at STPI, where Ocampo continues to employ symbols and iconography that straddle between accessibility and ambiguity. Developing print and paper experimentations in a collaborative setting which required a different momentum and mode of production, the artist imbues variations of old imagery with new techniques and approaches.
Text by Russell Storer.
