Esteban Ocampo-Giraldo “Salpicón con Ñapa”

Gitler &

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Gitler &_____ presents the solo exhibition Salapicón con Ñapa from Colombian-born painter Esteban Ocampo-Giraldo. This show comprises a selection of new and recent oil paintings depicting subjects often familial and autobiographical in nature. Ocampo-Giraldo’s portraits depict habitable spaces wherein fading memories of loved ones (and snapshot moments) reside, and in place of any references to specific times or location, a soulful and deeply personal melancholy inhabits each work, if not becoming the very subject at hand.

Through a deft and graphical use of oil, Ocampo-Giraldo renders his portraits with varying, albeit ever subtle degrees of flatness. This deconstruction is a freeing exercise for the artist, a means of processing nostalgia and channeling memories that are informed more by feeling than knowledge. Ocampo-Giraldo then reconstructs the once cubist-esque building blocks into something both figurative and lyrical. Certain elements, such as appendages, inanimate objects or the very scale of a room, are stretched and exaggerated, or placed at points that covertly challenge the viewer’s understanding of anatomy and proportionality.

Each scene is composed of a delicate and complex fusion of geometric forms, rendered off balance, often quiet, and animated by the chaos of quotidian details. Ocampo-Giraldo’s love of the figure and of using oil as story-telling medium fills the void left by memory. In that sense, autobiography itself is merely a construct or guiding principle in the artist’s work, a fathomless subject that takes shape in unexpected ways.

Esteban Ocampo-Giraldo is originally from Colombia and has been living and working in New York since 2013. He earned his Masters in Visual Art from Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, Bogotá, and his MFA in Painting from the New York Academy of Art. He has exhibited in numerous solo and group exhibitions throughout the U.S., South America, and Europe. Salapicón con Ñapa marks his first time showing with Gitler &_____.