Íñigo Manglano-Ovalle
12 Jan - 20 Feb 2010
IÑIGO MANGLANO-OVALLE
"White on White"
Inauguration 12th January to 20th February 2010.
The Soledad Lorenzo gallery will be presenting the new exhibition of Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle, from 12th January to 20th February.
Dirty Bomb, 2008, is a full-scale reproduction of Fatman, the sinister bomb which was detonated over Nagasaki in 1945. Made out of materials taken from sports cars, the white car varnish has been polished and buffed up in order for it to be ignominiously splattered with mud and afterwards devotedly cleaned again by the artist.
Dirty Bomb is a humorous reflection of Manglano-Ovalle’s strategic movements for the installation he exhibited at Documenta XII, Phantom Truck, 2007. Phantom Truck is a life-size reproduction of the mobile laboratory for biological weapons presented by former US Secretary of State Colin Powell before the UN Security Council as evidence of the Iraqi government's active possession and production of weapons of mass destruction. Working intensely using Powell’s PowerPoint slides, Manglano-Ovalle constructed the laboratory which would later turn out to be just an invention only to conceal it again within the confines of a darkened space. Dirty Bomb turns reality upside down: unlike the truck which was a false object invented in order to be real and later to be concealed again, the bomb, which is real, is presented as an object of devotion. However, both pieces confirm the artist’s interest in the ethical dilemma of aesthetics. As the artist points out “What is beautiful and what is monstrous? Or are they so inextricably intertwined you cannot distinguish one from the other? When I make a beautiful cloud, my desire is that people will think of a nuclear explosion.”
“Tent” is the development of a prototype of shelter made by the architect Buckminster Fuller at the end of the 70s for an expedition to the Artic. The tent, made from a geodesic structure, appears inside the space of the gallery as if it has been dragged by the wind, in an unusual position, upside down, losing in this way its entity as a functional object, that of a tent, and turning itself, through the spectator, into something more cosmological, a terrestrial sphere, our world, the planet that surrounds us. It comes accompanied by six photographs from the Series Iceberg B15, 2010, taken from images and data from NASA. These show part of the Antarctic coast through a series of images taken between 2001 and 2005 where we can see the development throughout time of this specific space. His photography is the result of a speculative development, like a Rorschach test, of scientific images that invite us towards a personal and psychological reflection of the human being throughout climatology.
Finally, Manglano-Ovalle presents Juggernaut, 2007, a video filmed in El Vizcaino Biosphere Reserve in Baja Sur, Mexico, the site of the mating ground for the endangered grey whale. However, instead of focusing his lens on the imposing image of the grey whales, Manglano-Ovalle turns his back on these “monsters” of the depths (now objects of our late-coming protection) in order to focus on the man-made giants, that is, the neighbouring salt mining vehicles, both belonging to and operated by the Mexican ESSA (Salt exporting firm), and the International Japanese Corporation of Mitsubishi. Installed in this strange scenario, Juggernaut, in a certain sense, is the initial shot of a film about nature filmed in an unnatural landscape. But rather than creating the scene for a news documentary or a fictitious plot, this initial shot appears to “let go” seeking instead to comb the far-away horizon incrusted with salt, which is occasionally blocked by the sudden arrival of an unlikely long and large procession of salt mining vehicles.
His recent works include Human/ Nature: Artists Respond to a Changing Planet on view at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, as well as solitary exhibits in collaboration with the Wexner Center, the Henry Art Gallery, the Chicago Art Institute, the Museum of Contemporary Art Monterrey, Mexico, and a travelling exhibit commissioned by the Cranbrook Art Museum. Manglano-Ovalle’s work was included in Documenta XII in 2007, and in the Liverpool biennial in 2004. He was awarded the 2008 individual artist award granted by the Richard H. Driehaus Foundation and in 2001 he received the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation fellowship.
"White on White"
Inauguration 12th January to 20th February 2010.
The Soledad Lorenzo gallery will be presenting the new exhibition of Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle, from 12th January to 20th February.
Dirty Bomb, 2008, is a full-scale reproduction of Fatman, the sinister bomb which was detonated over Nagasaki in 1945. Made out of materials taken from sports cars, the white car varnish has been polished and buffed up in order for it to be ignominiously splattered with mud and afterwards devotedly cleaned again by the artist.
Dirty Bomb is a humorous reflection of Manglano-Ovalle’s strategic movements for the installation he exhibited at Documenta XII, Phantom Truck, 2007. Phantom Truck is a life-size reproduction of the mobile laboratory for biological weapons presented by former US Secretary of State Colin Powell before the UN Security Council as evidence of the Iraqi government's active possession and production of weapons of mass destruction. Working intensely using Powell’s PowerPoint slides, Manglano-Ovalle constructed the laboratory which would later turn out to be just an invention only to conceal it again within the confines of a darkened space. Dirty Bomb turns reality upside down: unlike the truck which was a false object invented in order to be real and later to be concealed again, the bomb, which is real, is presented as an object of devotion. However, both pieces confirm the artist’s interest in the ethical dilemma of aesthetics. As the artist points out “What is beautiful and what is monstrous? Or are they so inextricably intertwined you cannot distinguish one from the other? When I make a beautiful cloud, my desire is that people will think of a nuclear explosion.”
“Tent” is the development of a prototype of shelter made by the architect Buckminster Fuller at the end of the 70s for an expedition to the Artic. The tent, made from a geodesic structure, appears inside the space of the gallery as if it has been dragged by the wind, in an unusual position, upside down, losing in this way its entity as a functional object, that of a tent, and turning itself, through the spectator, into something more cosmological, a terrestrial sphere, our world, the planet that surrounds us. It comes accompanied by six photographs from the Series Iceberg B15, 2010, taken from images and data from NASA. These show part of the Antarctic coast through a series of images taken between 2001 and 2005 where we can see the development throughout time of this specific space. His photography is the result of a speculative development, like a Rorschach test, of scientific images that invite us towards a personal and psychological reflection of the human being throughout climatology.
Finally, Manglano-Ovalle presents Juggernaut, 2007, a video filmed in El Vizcaino Biosphere Reserve in Baja Sur, Mexico, the site of the mating ground for the endangered grey whale. However, instead of focusing his lens on the imposing image of the grey whales, Manglano-Ovalle turns his back on these “monsters” of the depths (now objects of our late-coming protection) in order to focus on the man-made giants, that is, the neighbouring salt mining vehicles, both belonging to and operated by the Mexican ESSA (Salt exporting firm), and the International Japanese Corporation of Mitsubishi. Installed in this strange scenario, Juggernaut, in a certain sense, is the initial shot of a film about nature filmed in an unnatural landscape. But rather than creating the scene for a news documentary or a fictitious plot, this initial shot appears to “let go” seeking instead to comb the far-away horizon incrusted with salt, which is occasionally blocked by the sudden arrival of an unlikely long and large procession of salt mining vehicles.
His recent works include Human/ Nature: Artists Respond to a Changing Planet on view at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, as well as solitary exhibits in collaboration with the Wexner Center, the Henry Art Gallery, the Chicago Art Institute, the Museum of Contemporary Art Monterrey, Mexico, and a travelling exhibit commissioned by the Cranbrook Art Museum. Manglano-Ovalle’s work was included in Documenta XII in 2007, and in the Liverpool biennial in 2004. He was awarded the 2008 individual artist award granted by the Richard H. Driehaus Foundation and in 2001 he received the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation fellowship.