Human features, country scenes and modern, urban settings are deftly warped and fragmented in Daniel Ochoa’s portraits and landscapes.
Born in Santa Rosa, California, Ochoa graduated from Gonzaga University in Washington State before completing an MFA at the Academy of Art University, San Francisco, in 2008. Personal reflection underpins the artist’s approach. Ochoa’s mother is from the USA, while his father is from Mexico; according to the artist, this background feeds directly into his work, which explores identity, emotion and memory. “The experiences I had growing up in a bicultural family fuel the imagery and emotional quality of my work,” he explains.
Working in layers, Ochoa builds rearranged images where abstraction, realistic representation and pixel emulation come together. Key pictorial elements are often slightly askew, while the artist also sources imagery online — from Google Street View, the NASA API and social media networks — as a means of exploring how technology affects the construction of images.
Ochoa was awarded the Murphy and Cadogan Fellowship in the Fine Arts in 2008, and his work has featured at art fairs including SCOPE New York, Art Basel, and Art MRKT San Francisco. He has participated in group exhibitions in various US cities, hosted two solo shows in Park City, Utah and has also shown work in Amsterdam and Utrecht, The Netherlands.