Manuel Ocampo, Bird of Bataan 8, 2021, oil on canvas, 129 x 96.5 cm
Promdi is a solo exhibition by Manuel Ocampo in Singapore. One of the most internationally-acclaimed Filipino artists, Ocampo is known for his provocative works that present ironic commentaries and questions on personal identities, versions of culture and society. Deploying an arsenal of art-historical and literary references, religious and popular iconography, Ocampo’s complex paintings weave together various visual vocabularies, creating implied meaning through accumulation and its interrelationships. Presented to viewers in a way that remains deliberately opaque, the symbols and its formal properties that render them – their vivid colours, energetic gestures and course brushstrokes – open up a spectrum of interpretations that defies easy definitions.
In his latest exhibition Promdi, Ocampo brings to attention the arbitrary line between rural and urban life. Its title references the stereotypical and offending titular term, used in the Philippines to describe people who first arrive in a big city from the countryside. Using the artist’s personal experience and the recent move of his studio – from metropolitan Manila to the coastal and rural Bataan (a three-hour drive Northwest from the city) – as a starting point, the series of new paintings continue his fearless interrogations surrounding notions of personal identity, migration and culture in his characteristic irreverence.
Ocampo (b. 1965, Philippines) has been a vital presence in the international art scene for over twenty-five years, known for his paintings that play with religious and cultural symbolism and iconography for an incisive examination of various taboos and icons in society. Currently based in Bataan, the Philippines, he had an extended residency in California in the late 1980s and early 1990s and spent significant time working in both USA and Europe.
Venue: Yavuz Gallery, Gillman Barracks, 9 Lock Road, #02-23, Singapore 108937
Hours: 11am to 7pm (Tue to Sat); 1pm to 5pm (Sun). Closed on Mondays and Public Holidays
When: 25 Jun - 25 Jul 2021,
By: Ames Yavuz
