She has a Hot Ass: The Demystification of Art and its Incorporation Into the Practice of Everyday Life Could only be Achieved Through the Deliberate Lowering of Standards

Manuel Ocampo

GCAS was pleased to present a new performance installation work by internationally acclaimed Philippine painter Manuel Ocampo.

In this new work created especially for GCAS entitled “She has a Hot Ass: The Demystification of Art and its Incorporation Into the Practice of Everyday Life Could only be Achieved Through the Deliberate Lowering of Standards” Ocampo has invited a local tattoo artist to transform his sketches into permanent tattoos.

Typically Ocampo’s work presents a pictorial collision of socio-political positions. In his paintings devotional symbols often jostle beside commercial or corporate icons, pointedly deflating the efficacy of emblematic systems of power. Incorporating references as diverse as Jesus, Swastikas, cockroaches and even Snoopy, Ocampo’s paintings offer a crowded, cynical and heavily ironic slant oncontemporary post-colonial culture.

In this new work, Ocampo draws on what is perhaps art history’s most illustrious example of playful disruption. Marcel Duchamp’s childish defacing of a post card size reproduction of the Mona Lisa, with the L.H.O.O.Q, which phonetically makes the phrase, “she has a hot ass.” As with Duchamp’s moustache and graffittied pun, Ocampo’s sketches appear childlike, unfinished and imperfect.

In this way Ocampo draws attention to ideas of permanence in high art, and the fickleness of the artworld. This work continues Ocampos interest in the systematic devaluation of meaning and political postulations in his work, which he manages through the colliding, debasing and normalizing of his varied subject matter. In this remarkable work, visitors to the gallery during the exhibition will have the opportunity to be inscribed with one of Ocampo’s works. This pointed gesture acts to not only democratise the art object, but ultimately to test the viewers’ genuine commitment to Ocampo’s creative project.

Ocampo has been exhibiting internationally for the past 15 years. Significantly he has had solo exhibitions at Lizabeth Oliveria Gallery, Los Angeles (2007); Gray/Kapernekas, New York ( 2007); Art Contemporain Nosbaum and Reding, Luxembourg (2007); Galerie Jesco Von Puttkamer, Berlin (2006); AC (Lieu d’Art Contemporain), Sigean, France (2005); Galerie Baerbel Graesslin, Frankfurt (2004); Galerie Nathalie Obadia, Paris (1995 - 2002). He has also participated in major group exhibitions including: Seville Biennal, Seville (2004); Berlin Biennale II, Berlin (2001); 49° Esposizione Internazionale, Plateau of Mankind, La Biennale di Venezia (2001); 5th Biennale d’Art Contemporain de Lyon, Lyon, France (2000); ’97 Kwangju Biennial, Korea (1997) - among many others. Manuel Ocampo is represented in Australia by Uplands Gallery, Melbourne

Ocampo Performance: At the opening and on Saturdays for the duration of the exhibition visitors were invited to participate in Ocampo’s project through the tattooing of an original Manuel Ocampo artwork on their skin.