Knoxville Voice September, 17, 2008 Jorge Gomez Del Campo - Reconstituted Media September 17, 2008 By: Denise Sanabria JORGE GOMEZ DEL CAMPO is probably one of Knoxville's most elusive artists, but he deserves a good deal of attention. Gomez del Campo's eclectic background has forged an artist whose work is informed both regionally and internationally. Born of Mexican parents, he has spent part of each year visiting relatives in Mexico, absorbing the cultural differences between the two countries. He will be showing two works in the Knoxville Museum of Art's "Hola Hispanic Heritage Month Exhibition" from Sept. 16 to Oct, 16, and will also have an exhibit at Ironwood Studios in October, with an opening reception during October's First Friday. Though he has divided his work in the past between photography, video and painting, only recently has Gomez del Campo slowly abandoned paint entirely, replacing the traditional media with shredded segments of magazines. The shreds are divided into tones and colors to substitute for paint. His surface remains stretched canvas, often quite large in scale - an important feature because there is an optimum viewing distance from which the work is to be seen. If the viewer is too close, the representational imagery is lost in the conglomeration of paper details and text. From a distance, the full impact of the work is revealed. The first piece he produced in this fashion was inspired by imagery of a 13-year old model posing for a fashion advertisement with obvious sadomasochistic overtones. Disturbed by the commercial exploitation of a female that age, he set out to convey the underlying violence and sexual fetishism in the ad. An enthusiastic collector of print media, he had on hand a pile of "Mexican murder magazines," our neighboring country's version of American magazines such as True Crime. He shredded the magazines and used them, along with paint, to create the first in a multi-year series of works pursuing the theme of violence and depravity in the world of fashion. There is an endless supply of raw material in glamour magazines to portray an unattractive world where females are merely decorative objects used to sell goods, with marketers stooping to repugnant levels to get attention. Gomez del Campo's canvases are intense and disturbing. The dark backgrounds merge with flesh tones and large amounts of striking red hues. The jagged edges of the torn strips of paper lend a rhythm of discord and the clarity of the representational imagery is often lost in the abstraction of the application - not unlike British painter Cecily Brown's erotic work masked by the heavy application of smeared paint.Part of the way through this series of paintings, Gomez del Campo abandoned paint altogether. He had been dumpster-diving behind a decor shop and found a large cache of multicolor tissue paper. He discovered that by applying the translucent material in a coating of glue over segments of his partially completed compositions, the papers worked exactly as a transparent glaze of paint. All of the paper pieces are applied with glue and a final coat of varnish protects the work. It was not lost on the artist that his work was evolving to construction from mostly recycled materials. His canvas stretcher frames were made from wood taken from dumpsters on construction sites. All the new magazine strips came from recycling bins or were "rescued" from doctor's and dentist's offices and gyms. Using discarded material once produced to market overt consumerism became the perfect methodology to communicate his observations of third world living conditions contrasted with affluence. Manufactured desire is the theme presented in the two works at the KMA, "Guerilla 1" and "Guerilla 2." The works muse on the nature of economic transactions, prodding us to reflect on whether there's an erotic component to advertising and products built upon the desire for things we don't need but merely wish to have. Snake-like forms with bird heads embrace and seem to threaten nude or partially dressed reclining female figures while the background is an explosion of jagged red and yellow lines that could represent fire or blood. In keeping with this theme, the work that will be shown at Ironwood Studios is similar, though much larger in scale. This mural-sized work will be built of tiled canvases. When asked about future plans, Gomez del Campo reveals that he has been planning a traveling exhibition with a large selection of his work, in the manner of a band tour. On the road, he would have a list of locations where work would be shown for maybe two days at a time before moving to the next stop. The ultimate destination would be Mexico City and its vibrant art scene. The sudden hike in gas prices and the need to build a trailer to transport the work has put a temporary halt to these plans, and he's now researching the idea of finding a regular gallery in which to show his work. It could be just the right thing to facilitate his traveling exhibit -a few gallery sales would pay for the trailer and transportation, then the road trip could commence. Gomez del Campo attended Oak Ridge public schools and went on to receive a Bachelor of Arts degree from Transylvania University in Lexington, Ky., with a stint at the University of Paris, Sorbonne and the Academie du Port Royal, also in Paris. He later attended the graduate program at the San Francisco Art Institute.