Ocampo said his exhibit's title is inspired by Immanuel Kant's ideas of aesthetic pleasure—that pleasure be free from morals.

During an artist's talk on December 8, 2001, Ocampo said his exhibit's title is inspired by Immanuel Kant's ideas of aesthetic pleasure—that pleasure be free from morals. However, Ocampo aptly asks, "How do we free works that are full of imagery?"

Ocampo raises the question that (metaphorically) is the primary issue that has concerned me as a Filipina poet writing in a language I inherited as a result of colonialism. If poetry is like painting and vice versa (as some have said), then I consider visual imagery to be like narrative poetry. Imagery compels recognition, just as a word seems inherently to contain a particular definition. For me, subverting narrative has meant partly a diction based on sound, the sensual property(ies) of a word based on how it feels to pronounce it, visual properties (e.g. different fonts and sizes of text as applied on the page), the rhythm and other relationships created by various combination of words whether or not those combinations make sense, and other schemes not dependent on narrative meaning.

Given my approach, I've long been attracted to Ocampo's paintings. Though his works contain specific figurative references, he offers them situated in atypical settings in, it seems to me, a similar way as my poems might question conventional syntax and diction. For instance, in one canvas Ocampo painted a scarred face, a toilet, a German or Latin phrase, a table and a rose so that the viewer does not immediately focus on his adept formal techniques as a colorist or his balanced use of composition. Similarly, he created a pattern-based painting by using the head of Jesus Christ so that the viewer is as likely to get stuck on the religious iconic image rather than notice how, formally, he made a multilayered space from the flat field of a canvas through the repetitive use of the head as a mark disrupting the painting's surface. Consequently, despite the specificity of his imagery, I consider Ocampo to be an abstract artist who uses formal art techniques to make his images cohere, even as he does not proscribe the nature of such coherence.

That it may be difficult to overlook the figurative references in Ocampo's paintings reminds me of how I have wondered as to how others might read or listen to my poems. For I have attempted to transcend the specificity of words' meanings, yet words contain generally-accepted definitions as evidenced by the dictionary or based on common usage. In another Gabriela Silang poem entitled "Disguise: After Gabriela Missed," there is a phrase "civilized satiation." I used that phrase partly because I loved the nearness of the "z" sound (in "civilized") with the "sh" sound (in "satiation). Yet one can imagine interpreting a meaning from the two words though their meaning is (deliberately) ambiguous—something evident in the works of Gertrude Stein as well as contemporary experimental poets. Given that I see the same indistinctness in Ocampo's paintings despite the specificity—and stimulating specificity!—of his images, I found it heart-warming and liberating to hear of Ocampo's perspective, as evidenced in some notes I took during his talk:

—An abstract painting does not explain itself; it explains itself through its multiplicities.

—Meaning is created along with the painting. But it's not necessary.

My empathy for Ocampo's approach reveals itself in "Dusk." What, after all, is meant by the phrases "As one 'who has so deeply loved // the perfume of woman,' I sadly / observe, 'You're always armed // to stone me / along with the world'"? I certainly intended no particular narrative significance; I only wished to create an open-ended) space where the derived meaning is based on—and therefore differs per—each individual reader's subjectivity. Or, if I had an intention, it was an abstraction: the general sensibility of regret or sadness without specifying details for that sensibility. Meanwhile, Ocampo intends his works to question the notion of the autonomy of art—that an art work can exist in time and space without context. He stressed, "Context matters."

For example, one of the larger works in the gallery is an installation in the near-center of the room. The installation—which includes a canvas laid out on the floor—disrupts yet another painting convention: that a painting must hang on the wall. But I believed Ocampo when he said the installation surfaced primarily as a result of lack of space in his studio. Why not? Context is significant.

The impossibility of avoiding context also causes Ocampo to have problems with much so-called "political art." Specifically, he has a problem with this "genre" for behaving as "art" by, for example, being exhibited in museums or galleries. He explained, "Painting a still life during a rally can be political, as political as painting Marcos with the face of a dog [that later hangs in a museum or gallery]. Political art seems often to be negated by reality."

A poem can be political, but politics is not poetry.

Ocampo's thoughts on political art coincide with some of my views in the debate over "political poetry." Many poems in this "genre" may be more "political" than "poetry" and—using Ocampo's suggestion—their authors' goals might be better served in political activism rather than the writing of a poem. A poem can be political, but politics is not poetry.

Ocampo logically relates his views on context to a questioning of authorial integrity. As he put it, "The authorial role is important, but not as a given."

Similarly, the phrases I inserted in "Dusk" are not originally mine. I am using another's—Baudelaire's—words, just as Ocampo uses found material in his works. This does not mean that I have erased myself from the poem; I still had to choose which words by another to put into the poem.

Within the exhibit, Ocampo's thoughts about the author and context are strikingly developed in "The Compensatory Motif in the Libidinal Economy of a Painter's Bad Conscience (2001)," a work hanging over the fireplace of the gallery. It features a found painting of a seascape, upon which Ocampo drew a cartoon bubble enclosing the words "the person who can't dance says the band can't play." The painting hangs against a wall that features various ephemera ranging from cut-out text to erotica to pictures of barely-dressed Filipina models; the effect evokes a wall that could have been transplanted from an artist's studio—which is to say, Ocampo adeptly manifested context within the work itself instead of only leaving context outside of the work to be ascribed by the viewer. In this case, the primary context is Ocampo's subjectivity, not the viewer's (though the viewer subsequently generates his/her own subjective response to the ephemera).

Ocampo's choices are well-considered. He does not make the mistake others make about believing that life—and art—is dualistic. In other words, in poetry one need not choose between the autobiographical (confessional) mode or the deliberate distancing from the personal "I." It would be like believing that the only options in art-making are radical monochrome paintings (as a manifestation of "art for art's sake") or realism. On the contrary, Ocampo offers a space for multiple interactions without erasing himself. It's just that he makes it difficult for others to label him—and labeling, or naming, is a form of identification.

Similarly, when I wrote the Gabriela Silang poems, I included my "I" by incorporating aspects of my life. I did so because I felt that Gabriela had to become me—and I had to become her—for those moments when I was writing on her behalf. This deliberate conflation of our lives facilitated, I felt, an emotional resonance that might not otherwise exist in the poems were I, as the author, more distant from Gabriela's experiences. As Ocampo said, "The biographical story is always affected by the political."

...my addressing this poetry world concern is akin to Ocampo's self-conscious considerations of art history...

In addition, I related my experiences as Gabriela's because I wanted to address the contemporary discourse about the "I" in poetry, specifically how the attempt to get away from the personal "I" can become a mode of silencing the stories of one's culture. This positioning relates to my and Gabriela's shared ethnicity as Filipinas. As an ethnic-American poet, I write during a period when certain poets wish to get away from the autobiographical "I"—and yet that position, for me, could become a silencing of themes related to my Filipino culture and history. This is a tension of identity-exploration that, as Chinese-American poet and critic John Yau has pointed out, has not been addressed well by both modernist and post-modernist poets despite the advent of so-called multiculturalism. In my first book BLACK LIGHTNING: POETRY-IN-PROGRESS, Yau noted: ''The identity issue.has not been addressed by later modernist poets because many often want to assimilate and be part of the mainstream and, thus, do not question the mainstream's use of identity, how it fixes them with a narrow possibility. It's not being addressed by post-modernists because they say the author is dead. But why is the author dead at a point when demographics have changed such that all these people who were once marginalized and silenced can now talk?") It was not until Ocampo's talk that I realized, too, that my addressing this poetry world concern is akin to Ocampo's self-conscious considerations of art history as he makes his paintings.

*****

"Art as the subversion of the rule of reasons. It not only follows its own reasons but is sovereign. Art is contradiction. A former student told me that my work is like "Satan's version of Christ."
—from Eileen Tabios's notes on Manuel Ocampo's Exhibition-Related Talk

To create or situate one's self outside of categories defined by those seeking authority through objectifying the artistic act is inevitably to engage with paradoxes. Ocampo said his paintings all have surface as point of origin and arrival. That is, if painting is "surface pars excellence" with all its contained references to art history, he said he questions that territory with an "investment of subjectivity" through his projection of "social, cultural, political signatures" (e.g. skulls, Catholic icons, figures that look like KKK clansmen, etc). Yet, he noted, while his paintings are "full of signatures, they are also questioning meaning"—e.g., the signatures, or imagery, are offered in unexpected contexts or become "abstracted" into a mere medium through which paint is applied onto canvas. Again, I empathize with Ocampo's approach, as reflected in how I imagined a 21st century life for Gabriela even as my poems are based on abstract(-ed) language that posits a non-reliance on meaning.

"The Stream of Transcendent Object Making Consciously Working Towards The Goal (2001)"

In his exhibit, Ocampo's questioning of meaning is glaringly evident in canvases whose imagery are comprised of art theory text. "The Stream of Transcendent Object Making consciously Working Towards The Goal (2001)" (or "The Stream"), for one, features a green and yellow backdrop marked by black words, top to bottom, side to side from a letter that begins: "Dear Wings of Chicken. Thanks for sending me those aphorisms (are they Nietchze's?). And they accurately picture our predicament in the Arts: The Refusal To Look Reality In The Face—mortal thirst for fictions.that's exactly it, we human beings are naturally inclined to make sense of something that goes beyond recognition."

To meditate on the significance of Ocampo's use of art text is to engage in a spiraling thought process that requires persistence to avoid collapsing into itself. Ocampo's incorporation of art theory references the nature of painting being fraught with art history. But by choosing text that can facilitate a disdainful reaction to art critics and theorists, Ocampo challenges the notion of painting as a "territory" with a mutually-accepted specificity, as if history and memory are not ever fluctuating. Equally significant, to accept a particular—including a dominant—narrative as "art history" may be to affirm the contexts of racism that could have affected the writing of such history.

Nonetheless, my first reaction to "The Stream" was to question its effectiveness. While accepting the validity of Ocampo's approach, I initially responded to his paintings of art text by wondering: did the painter subvert the critic, or did the critic subvert the painter? For, by incorporating art theory text into the painting, Ocampo essentially made those words "art." In doing so, did he not elevate the words that he thought to subvert?

It wasn't until after considerable re-consideration, walking several times around "The Stream" and recalling my own approach to abstract poetry and the Gabriela Silang poems that I fully realized the merit of Ocampo's art text paintings. For if one viewed the words as marks rather than text, the result is an abstract painting hinting at lattices and screens such as those painted by other contemporary abstract painters like Bill Jensen, Terry Winters or Carlos Villa. Indeed, the hint of a screen offers the formal layering of space (a visual art, not literary, concern) while psychologically (a la Kant) hinting at the embodiment of a mask or deception.

While the point of Ocampo's observation is valid on its own, his perspective also subverts dominant art history's Western orientation.

Ocampo's thought process is clearly as layered as the thought process his works compel me to undergo. I found it significant that he suggested the possibility for a Chinese or Japanese artist (steeped in ideograms where the shape of the word embodies the meaning of the word) to look at an abstract painting by Franz Kline (marked by calligraphic-type brushstrokes) and conclude that there is additional meaning besides the depiction of energetic or gestural brushstrokes. While the point of Ocampo's observation is valid on its own, his perspective also subverts dominant art history's Western orientation.

I see an analogy to this subversion in my own desire to write poems that relate to contradicting historical assumptions of what comprise Asian American poetry. Certain critics have assumed that Asian American poetry is limited to topics that address culture, immigration, ethnicity, among others. When I choose to create metaphors by referencing such topics as Greek art, fine wine, quantum physics and/or astronomy, it is partly to talk back at the dominant canon's preconception of Asian American poetry. Finally, my use of abstract language contradicts the assumption that Asian American poetry is only based on storytelling.

I also consider it worth noting that "The Stream" was structured sculpturally rather than as something hanging on the wall. Two equal-sized canvases joined at the top by a hinge stood on the floor like a "sandwich board" sign that might stand outside an eatery. The form evokes an inverted "V." To invert a letter is to subvert a letter. Moreover, the viewer engages with the work by circling it (just as one's thoughts circle in reflection). Pacing around the work avoids placing the viewer in a stance of looking at a hanging painting; the latter position is more typical when one is "reading" a work (similar to how one may read a sign against a wall).

What meaning exists, therefore, is the same type of meaning that surfaces from abstract works—it is the meaning invested by the viewer/reader...

Finally, the choice of green and yellow for the backdrop is significant. These colors are among those most present in nature. His choice of colors, indeed, evoke Jackson Pollock's famous statement, "I am nature." In other words, Ocampo used color to reference art history, thus stressing that the canvas is a painting to be looked at, not a page to be read. In enabling this conclusion, Ocampo has the last word over art theorists—he has abstracted their words away from whatever meaning was intended by their authors. He claimed that he didn't write text on canvas; he only painted the words. By turning words into images, he has eliminated (the specificity of) meaning from the text (and, indeed, many art criticisms may be said to be meaningless). What meaning exists, therefore, is the same type of meaning that surfaces from abstract works—it is the meaning invested by the viewer/reader, rather than what is intended by the author. It is like the "meaning" interpreted by Filipinos when they used Spanish words out of conventional Spanish context or when they co-opted English words to create "Taglish."

My engagement with "The Stream" enhanced my appreciation of other works in the exhibit, such as "Artist Examining Life Closely / Death Before Decoration (1998)" which features the words: "Subject: No ideas have entered this work. Everything is purged but Art." In another Gabriela Silang poem entitled "Disguise: After Gabriela Missed," I had written:

I am accustomed to embraces
from strangers' retinas—

But "civilized satiation"
are words, not existence

though I have peeled away years
assuming the expanse of living

will narrow to a moment
when I shall stumble

on a mirror's path
to discover the fairy tale

entitled by a lost name: Courage

There is no particular meaning to this excerpt. But one need not understand the narrative meaning of this excerpt. I hope only for the reader to feel a certain resonance that will inspire their imagination to invest significance into the space crafted by these words. Without defining ahead of time the limits to the reader's experience, I wish for the reader to experience only Poetry. Relatedly, Ocampo stated, "My current work has no explanation. But it doesn't need one."

My favorite work in the exhibition is one of the canvases in "The Coherent Deformation of the Non Surrogate as a Figuration of Potential painting (2001)" (or "The Coherent") which features the words: "A Painting Making A Blank Statement Leaving Nothing To Be Explained." While the words hearken Ocampo's development of abstraction and its implication for meaning, the painting also integrates itself within the art historical context of white-on-white paintings made by a number of artists such as Kasimir Malevich, Robert Rauschenberg, Robert Ryman, Richard Tuttle and Brice Marden. Recalling the tradition of white-on-white paintings only makes me more appreciate Ocampo's version for having successfully integrated words. Even a single letter can be fraught with meaning and, in "The Coherent," he successfully emptied the words of definitions. Indeed, the words are painted in open-block script, facilitating the idea of blank meanings and allowing the canvas to remain primarily white.

Mastery of technique is significant, partly to indicate that politics has not subverted aesthetics. In fact, I could say similar things about Ocampo's work that I once wrote on the artist Susan Bee who also incorporates text in her paintings: "Bee has turned her eye onto a troubled world and brought its sometimes dysfunctional fragments into her paintings. Unlike poets who lay textual fragments on the page to highlight rupture through caesuras and juxtaposed meanings, Bee is interested in unifying the fragments. This, she accomplishes through color as well as the surface and gesture of her brushstrokes. She is a political artist making paintings, not politics." In addition, I could say that notwithstanding the existence of words in his paintings, Ocampo, like Bee, "is a cultural activist, too, by being as strong as possible in [the] medium of painting . for [both artists know] that painting is like poetry more than it is like politics. That is, politics (in whose engagement must lie communication, including miscommunication) can be articulated but painting cannot." (See http://epc.buffalo.edu/authors/bee/reviews/tabios.html for the entire article).

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