LOS ANGELES
Manuel Ocampo: “Kitsch Recovery Progrom” at Lizabeth Oliveria Gallery
Even a so-so painting by Manuel Ocampo is still better than the best by many of his contemporaries; but that is not of huge comfort when first encountering the large body of sanguine, stridently anti-establishmentarian and seemingly unresolved paintings and works on paper in his self-styled, deliberately misspelled, “Kitsch Recovery Progrom.” While it’s true that with an investment of time and proximity the very big (mostly 72" x 48") acrylic and oil on canvas paintings grow and deepen in the mind, the overall impression remains one of hurried execution and low reserves of fresh material; probably this is simply the result of a jam-packed exhibition schedule in recent times. However, a few of the individual canvases emerge from the prevailing fog of repetitive images, sketchy, skeletal draftsmanship and gothic talking hotdogs. Monument to the Failed Liberation of the World I depicts a figure with the lower body of a malformed man and the torso of a tabletop shaped like a Star of David. There is a ceremonial Jewish cloth, an open book of scripture, a skull, some candles, dangling eyeballs, sausages, cobwebs, hanging bare bulbs: all the borrowed from and built upon things in the Guston bag of tricks that Ocampo has long quoted. Catholic imagery appears elsewhere, on The Spectre of Critique I: PMS a wooden cross looms behind the shrouded head of a ghost, a duckling feeds on garbage, a ham hangs from the cross, a crow perches atop it.
On balance, a fairly in-depth narrative sorts itself out having to do with the absurdity of academic and critical posturing, the native power of folk and outsider visual idioms, the enduring aura of certain aspects of classical form, and an impugning of the post-colonial hegemony of Westernism over the indigenous cultures of North and South America. Familiar territory for this iconic artist; but the loosening of his technique and the shifting of focus from the political to the cultural in this series both expands and dilutes the commanding formal power of his work. Although they remain richly textured, lavishly colored, and intensively executed, these paintings stake out a more ironic, less emotionally intense stance than audiences are used to from this artist. Testing out a new style of engagement with the world is never a bad idea, unless you lose yourself in the process.