PHotoEspaña 2009: Matadero Madrid Shows Video Installation Made by Íñigo Manglano-Ovalle

Íñigo Manglano-Ovalle, Nocturne (Detail), 2002. ©Íñigo Manglano-Ovalle

MADRID.- Madrid’s Old Slaughterhouse -‘Matadero Madrid’- which was transformed into a new centre for contemporary creation opens a video installation made to order by New York MoMA in 2003 considering the introduction of security tools in intimate situations as part of PHotoEspaña 2009. The art work is a live broadcast of Afghan poppies and the son of the artist himself performed with night vision cameras.

Since his first solo exhibition in 1989, Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle has carried out an incessant artistic activity in international exhibition spaces. His production, which is
oriented toward video and installations, uses engineering and new technologies in an increasingly refined way. His thematic, aesthetic and conceptual interests revolve around research on genetics, identity and climatic phenomena as well as on sensory, physical and mental issues.

The exhibition comprises a video installation in which he uses night vision cameras. In Nocturne (White Poppies) (2002), various cameras film Afghan poppies, and this recording is simultaneously projected on a screen. Meanwhile, on another screen, the piece Sonambulo III (Infrared) (2003) is exhibited and shows the artist’s son sleeping. Manglano-Ovalle uses this cutting-edge technology, familiar to everyone since the Iraq war, to insert brutal elements that are close to surveillance tools into sensual, tender environments, confronting beauty with danger.

Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle (Madrid, 1961) has a Spanish father and a Colombian mother. He has lived in Bogota, Chicago and Madrid. He graduated in Comparative Literature and holds a master’s degree from the Art Institute of Chicago. He currently works as a professor at the University of Illinois (Chicago). His work was shown in the biennials of Sao Paulo (1998) and the Whitney Museum in New York (2000) as well as in the 12th Documenta at Kassel (2007).

Íñigo Manglano-Ovalle, Nocturne (Detail), 2002. ©Íñigo Manglano-Ovalle