Manuel Ocampo’s highly charged, iconoclastic paintings speak to a collective history, reflecting on the contemporary cross-cultural experience lived by artists originating from colonised countries. A prominent presence in the international art scene, known for his provocative imagery that embraces dark humour and socio-political critique, Ocampo achieved one of the highest accolades in 2017, representing The Philippines at the 57th Venice Biennale. With a reputation for fearlessly tackling societal taboos and subjecting cherished symbols of religion to irony, kitsch and caricature, his paintings have been recognised as influential contributors to an international surrealist-pop aesthetic.

Ocampo’s distinctive painting style is characterised by coarse brushwork and luminous colours, and pays homage to the grunge counter-culture movement, which he discovered while living in California in the 1980s. Ocampo’s first solo exhibition, Lies, Falls Hopes, and Megalomania, in Los Angeles in 1988 set the stage for a rapid rise to international prominence. By the early 1990s, his reputation was firmly established, with inclusion in Documenta IX (1992), the Venice Biennale (1993) and the seminal exhibition Helter Skelter: L.A. Art in the 1990s at The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (1992). Over the past thirty years, Ocampo has exhibited extensively throughout the Asia Pacific, Europe and the Americas, including in the Biennale of Sydney, Seville Biennale, Venice Biennale, Berlin Biennale, Biennale d’art Contemporain de Lyon, Kwangju Biennial, Corcoran Biennial and Documenta. In 2005, his work was the subject of a large-scale survey at Casa Asia in Barcelona, and Lieu d’Art Contemporain, Sigean, France.

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