
Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle
Bird in Space MACH 10 Hypervelocity Test (Run 3680, 000188-000284), 2013

Installation in 3 parts:
Bird in Space Prototype (2012)
Steel, carbon fiber, epoxy, aluminium
138 x …

Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle’s technologically sophisticated work explores ecosystems, and political issues such as immigration, class systems, and gun violence. He frequently examines weather systems, as in his “Cloud Prototype” series, which comprises giant fiberglass and titanium clouds based on numerical data from real-world thunderclouds. In a series of installation and video pieces, Manglano-Ovalle makes the iconic modernist architecture of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe the site for narratives and scenarios that act as social and political metaphors. In Le Baiser/The Kiss (1999), a short film set in Mies’s Farnsworth House, the artist appears as a laborer, washing the exterior windows of the house, while inside the house a woman stands at a DJ station spinning records, apparently oblivious to the worker’s presence. Manglano-Ovalle draws attention to social hierarchies, while also referencing the fraught relationship between the architect and Edith Farnsworth—the Chicago physician who commissioned the house.


Installation in 3 parts:
Bird in Space Prototype (2012)
Steel, carbon fiber, epoxy, aluminium
138 x 12 x 10 cmMach 10 Bird in Space (2013)
Steel sculpture, table
61 x 6 x 10 cm (sculpture)Set of 99 Schlieren Photographs (2013)
Archival pigment prints
50.8 x 37.8 cm (framed)

Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle’s technologically sophisticated work explores ecosystems, and political issues such as immigration, class systems, and gun violence. He frequently examines weather systems, as in his “Cloud Prototype” series, which comprises giant fiberglass and titanium clouds based on numerical data from real-world thunderclouds. In a series of installation and video pieces, Manglano-Ovalle makes the iconic modernist architecture of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe the site for narratives and scenarios that act as social and political metaphors. In Le Baiser/The Kiss (1999), a short film set in Mies’s Farnsworth House, the artist appears as a laborer, washing the exterior windows of the house, while inside the house a woman stands at a DJ station spinning records, apparently oblivious to the worker’s presence. Manglano-Ovalle draws attention to social hierarchies, while also referencing the fraught relationship between the architect and Edith Farnsworth—the Chicago physician who commissioned the house.