Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle

Max Protetch Gallery, New York
Through April 29

Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle (born in Madrid in 1961) since early in his career favored the study of ethnic, genetic, and cultural identity, investigation that he put into practice with a multimedia approach (photography, sculpture, environmental installations, videos). His instruments of expression are conceptual, and sometimes emphasize, more than the work in itself, the theoretical/practical procedure leading to its creation. For the latter, the artist also employs the help of external collaborators, such as science and technology experts. The cycle of photographs The Garden of Delights (1998) includes images of DNA samples, obtained from people all over the world, enlarged with a microscope and modified with a computer. Beyond their aesthetic value, their main appeal lies in the exploration of recent developments in genetics and of their possible effects on the universal perception of individual identity. Historical references for this project are the paintings made in the Eighteen-century Spanish colonies, named Casta. These works, ordered by the Spanish authorities, illustrated on canvas the results of mestizaje, of the mixing, that is, of the main races in the Mexican colony: Indians, Spaniards, and Africans. Genetics’ ethical and legal implications are dealt with in Banks in Pink and Blue (2000): two vessels – a pink one for potential female genes, and a blue one for male – collect semen deposited by some volunteers, among which are some famous artists. On the walls are posted the deposit contracts they signed with a corporation founded by the artist for this purpose. The video installation Clock (2000) marks a change of direction in the artist’s theoretical journey. For the first time seventeen actual human faces – no more cells or surrogates – appear on as many monitors controlled by a satellite clock, and change their expression with the striking of seconds, minutes, and hours. The artist is trying to humanize and universalize the temporal dimension, but at the same time he digitizes and depersonalizes human beings. The search for a global temporal dimension is deepened in Climate (2000), presently on exhibit at New York Max Protetch Gallery. Three large liquid crystal video screens are placed in a “U” shape in the middle of the gallery, supported and framed by a scaffold of metal bars tied to the ceiling by steel cables. The architectural structure of the installation – the impact of which on the viewer is more immediate than the images on the screen and the audio – is stiffly geometrical and forces spectators to take obligatory paths within the gallery space. On the screens, alternately, three videos are projected, set on different floors of a building whose architecture recalls the installation’s interlaced system, which in turn partially recalls Mondrian’s grids. On the first screen, a weather-watcher (a meteorologist) looks outside a window while carefully listening to a weather-financial forecast, which the visitors can hear also. The artist has placed this character in a futuristic world without space and time boundaries, in which “everything is for everybody and all at the same time”: time and weather are the same for everybody. On another screen, two hands assemble and disassemble an automatic pistol and place the pieces on a glass table, on which the reflection of a window is visible. The third video shows a woman in the lobby of the same building, waiting for something or somebody. Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle is also exhibiting a video installation at the Biennial 2000 Exhibition of the Whitney Museum of American Art.




Micaela Giovannotti
Translation by Bruna Pegoraro Brylawski