Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle

He has been recognized with MacArthur Foundation, Guggenheim, and National Endowment for the Arts fellowships and his work belongs to the collections of forty major institutions. He has been a professor at Northwestern University since 2012 and lives and works in Chicago.

Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle studied at Williams College and School of the Art Institute of Chicago. The recorded working language is Spanish. Places of work recorded in the authority are Chicago. Employment is recorded with University of Illinois Chicago. Work by Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle is recorded in the collections of Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst and Whitney Museum of American Art. Distinctions recorded are Guggenheim Fellowship and MacArthur Fellows Program.

• Name — Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle • Born — 1961 • Birthplace — Madrid, Spain • Known for — Conceptual art, Installation art, Sculpture, Video, Photography • Education — School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Williams College • Website — Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle • Awards — MacArthur Foundation, John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, National Endowment for the Arts • Illustration — Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle, Well 35°58'16"N – 106°5'21"W (site-specific land art, Santa Clara Pueblo, NM, 2014). Pictured: Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle.

Manglano-Ovalle was born in Madrid and raised in Bogotá, Colombia and Chicago, Illinois. He received BA degrees in art and art history and Latin American and Spanish literature from Williams College (1983), before earning an MFA in Sculpture from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) in 1989. He exhibited actively during graduate school, at alternatives spaces such as Randolph Street Gallery and Hyde Park Art Center, and quickly became part of a burgeoning conceptual scene in Chicago that sought to address political issues in non-didactic ways. Since that time, he has had major solo exhibitions at the Art Institute of Chicago (2010, 2005, 1999), MASS MoCA (2009), Rochester Art Center (2006), Krefelder Kunstmuseen (2005), Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Monterrey (2004), Museo Tamayo Arte Contemporaneo (2003), MCA, Chicago (1997, 1993), Christopher Grimes Gallery (1998–2017, Santa Monica), Max Protetch Gallery (1998–2010, New York), and Galerie Thomas Schulte (2006–17), among others. He has also appeared in group exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, and Guggenheim Museum Bilbao.

• Illustration — Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle, Video still from Le Baiser (1999). Manglano-Ovalle's diverse work is connected by its interest in probing the underlying forces, systems and histories that shape and describe contemporary identity, ethics, aesthetics, climate, and politics. His early projects employed multi-faceted, community-oriented strategies to explore cultural identity, migration and immigration, social and geographic boundaries, and urban violence. His later work evolved in a more conceptual direction, initiating wider sociopolitical dialogues on culture, science and technology, ecosystems, and geopolitics.

Manglano-Ovalle's early work was rooted in localized communities and the personal experience of living between cultures. For Assigned Identity Project (1990), he worked with a West Town, Chicago community center, fusing art (scaled-up green cards, fingerprints and topographical maps examining identity and categorization) with community service teaching a practical course on amnesty and federal (INS) practices. His Tele-Vecindario (1993) was part of the pioneering, Mary Jane Jacob-curated "Culture in Action" social practice event, and gained him widespread attention. He collaborated with a group of neighboring at-risk Latino teens, leading to the formation of Street-Level Video, a training collective that empowered youths to articulate street culture and community concerns about gang activity, gentrification, social control and cultural fragmentation. The project developed into a sprawling dialogue on residential social space, presented at public screenings, a 71-monitor, 46-video block party (involving the collaboration of four rival gangs), and video installations created in conjunction with the MCA Chicago. Manglano-Ovalle explored similar issues in early sculpture and installations incorporating unorthodox elements, such as suspended inner tubes evoking the iconic bolsa (raft) (Flotilla, 1991), actual rafts (Balsero, 1994), car sound systems (Subwoofer, 1995), or a 1964 Chevy Impala (Flora and Fauna, 1997) referencing low-rider car culture. Critics described his minimalist installation, Bloom (1995–6), as a subversively seductive yet repulsive meditation on violence; it consisted of Plexiglas cases on spare metal tables containing luminous blocks of ballistic gelatin replicating human flesh, into which hollow-point bullets were fired. The transitional Note on Levitating the U.S. Pentagon or How to Operate a Car Jack (1996) foreshadowed his growing conceptual and political focus; it featured 195 hydraulic jacks arranged in a pentagonal formation, referencing low-rider culture, the minimalism of Robert Morris, and 1960s Happenings and protests. • Illustration — Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle, Gravity Is a Force To Be Reckoned With (steel, glass, wood, mixed media; 25' x 25' x 13'). Installation view, MASS MoCA (2009).

Manglano-Ovalle has received fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation (2009), MacArthur Foundation (2001), United States Artists (2011), and National Endowment for the Arts (1995), as well as a Wexner Center for the Arts Media Arts Award (1997–2001) and Artadia Award (2008), among others. His work belongs to the public collections of forty institutions, including the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Art Institute of Chicago, Whitney Museum, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, Library of Congress, Museo de Arte Contemporane (Bilbao), Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, Museum für Moderne Kunst, National Gallery of Victoria, and Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst (SMAK).