GALERIE THOMAS SCHULTE

Iñigo MANGLANO-OVALLE PRESS RELEASE

2009 2007 2006

2006

On Friday, April 28, Galerie Thomas Schulte will be presenting in their new gallery space on Charlottenstraße 24 in Berlin Mitte the Installation Red Berg (r11iO1) by Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle. The exhibition will begin with an opening reception from 6 to 10 pm, and on the following Saturday and Sunday, the space will be open as part of the gallery weekend from 11 am to 6 pm.

Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle (born 1961 in Madrid) lives and works in Chicago, where he also teaches at the University. In recent years his work has been presented in various institutions around the world, including Vienna’s Generali Foundation Museum Haus Lange/Haus Esters in Krefeld, and the Art Institute of Chicago.

His work engages in a search to understand the forces and systems that drive the continuous presence of change in our world. These include social phenomena such as migration and urbanity as well as natural phenomena.

The work Red Berg (r11iO1) is based on a permanent installation the artist developed in 2005 for the Art Institute of Chicago. It features a monumental model of an actual iceberg that the artist encountered on the coast of Newfoundland. The almost 150-meter-high ice formation was scientifically measured using radar and ultrasound techniques, registered as data, and digitally imaged in a computer simulation. In collaboration with the architect Colin Franzen, it was finally brought to sculptural representation that presents a single moment in the constant becoming and passing of the object illustrated.

Red Berg (r11iO1) is thus a momentary snapshot of an ephemeral object that in and of itself never maintains the same state, but is constantly moving and transforming. This movement and transformation in turn is dependent on external climatic influences.

In this fashion, Manglano-Ovalle explores a metaphor and a subject that has fascinated philosophy, literature, and art for centuries, combining the poetic quality of the natural phenomenon with its real context of significance.