Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle
Video Installations
12/04/2003 - 15/06/2003
The Palm Beach Institute of Contemporary Art
601 Lake Ave.
Tel. 561 582-0006
www.palmbeachica.org
Image: Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle: Climate (2000), video stills. Courtesy of the artist and Max Protetch Gallery.
The Palm Beach Institute of Contemporary Art (PBICA) will exhibit Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle’s Video Installations and Imperfect Innocence, the private photography collection of Debra and Dennis Scholl.
The concurrent exhibitions open April 12 and run through June 15, 2003.
CONCURRENT EXHIBITIONS AT PALM BEACH INSTITUTE OF CONTEMPORARY ART FEATURE PHOTOGRAPHY AND VIDEO ART
LAKE WORTH, Fla. (February 18, 2003) — The Palm Beach Institute of Contemporary Art (PBICA) will exhibit Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle’s Video Installations and Imperfect Innocence, the private photography collection of Debra and Dennis Scholl. The concurrent exhibitions open April 12 and run through June 15, 2003.
Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle
Video Installations
Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle, born in Spain, raised in Bogotá, Columbia and educated in the United States, was awarded the prestigious MacArthur Fellowship in 2001. His diverse body of work in video art and sculpture has incorporated tangible items, such as custom car stereos, firearms and DNA samples, to investigate intangible notions of individual identity, community, urban violence and hierarchies of power. One of his most recent video projects is a trilogy set within architectural locations in the U.S. and Germany designed by architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe (1886-1969). The series uses these Modernist spaces as a means to explore social conditions.
The first in the series, Le Baiser/ The Kiss (1999), takes place in the famous glass-and-steel, single room Farnsworth House in Plano, Ill. Manglano-Ovalle casts himself as a window washer working a squeegee patiently and lovingly outside the house. Inside, oblivious and indifferent to the window washer, a young woman listens to music with headphones connected to a simple turntable. There is no dialogue in the video, only the sounds of the slurpy squeegee interchanged with the music (by the rock band “Kiss”) from the headphones. It is through this interaction that The Kiss explores many different ideals such as the essence of masculinity and femininity; inside vs. outside; and the upper class vs. the working class.
“Think of this beautiful building as if it were a beautiful human being,” said Max Protetch, owner the New York gallery that represents Manglano-Ovalle. “Think of it as falling in love with someone who gives you nothing back.”
The second installation is titled Climate (2000). It is more ominous than The Kiss, offering disconnected images of roof-mounted wind gauges, actors impersonating either air-traffic controllers or meteorologists, and an unidentifiable man dismantling and cleaning an automatic weapon. Replacing the domestic setting of the Farnsworth House, Climate is staged in Mies’ twin apartment high-rises on Lake Shore Drive in Chicago. Two men wearing headsets sit in a glass-walled apartment monitoring weather reports while studying the sky. A machine gun is assembled and disassembled. A woman sits alone on a Mies-designed Barcelona chair in the lobby and another woman occasionally whispers a lullaby in her ear. A haunting soundtrack consists of ominous music, weather reports in Korean, and other fragmented spoken texts.
Manglano-Ovalle claims that he was inspired by the Spanish word for climate, “tiempo,” which also means time.
“Climate is a reference to the weather as well as a reference to the condition of ‘our time,’” he explained.
The final installation in the video series is Alltagszeit (2001), a complicated German word that is loosely translated as “In Ordinary Time.” It is set in the enormous entrance hall of Mies’ Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin, the last building completed by the architect before his death. Shot in 35mm film and transferred to video, it features manipulated footage from a 12-hour performance shot from dawn to dusk, edited down to just 18 minutes. Sixteen performers move to orders that are given by a principle figure. The sweeping light and shadows cast by the sunrise and
sunset add another dimension to the piece.
Inspired by Jacques Tati’s 1967 film Play Time, an epic of the modern world in which the film’s protagonist gets lost in a maze of modern architecture, Alltagszeit is a narrative of man’s life and place in the world.
Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle’s video installations, organized by the Cranbrook Art Museum and curated by Irene Hofman, will be on display in PBICA’s main gallery from April 12 until June 15, 2003. A full color catalogue accompanies the exhibition with essays by Irene Hofman, Anna Novakov and an interview with the artist by PBICA Director, Michael Rush.
Imperfect Innocence
The Debra and Dennis Scholl Collection
Throughout history, photography has advanced both technologically and as an art form. In recent years, it has made its way into contemporary art as collectors and curators have seen photography, video and digital art replace more traditional media such as painting and sculpture. Debra and Dennis Scholl are among the country’s most prominent collectors of contemporary photography. The Miami Beach couple began their “photo-based art” collection in 1992, just as contemporary photography was on the ascendant. Imperfect Innocence is a sampling of their photography and video art collection and features a wide range of well-known artists, including Bernd and Hilla Becher, Andreas Gursky and Pipilotti Rist and emerging artists such as Naomi Fisher and Hellen van Meene.
The exhibition is co-organized by the Contemporary Museum, Baltimore and
the Palm Beach Institute of Contemporary Art (PBICA).The catalogue that
accompanies the exhibition, published by the Contemporary and PBICA,
features an interview with the Scholls by Gary Sangster, former director
of the Contemporary and curator of the exhibition.
Dennis Scholl characterizes his collection as a “living organism.” “Our goal is to capture a moment in time. Few artworks become iconic images that transcend their moment in history,” said Scholl. “We know that whatever our aspirations, all the pieces in the collection will not be of equal importance in ten or twenty years. However, the collection as a whole will constitute a representative sampling of what contemporary artists were doing with photography from about 1992 onward, and whom they were looking to in the preceding generation of artists concerned with the capabilities of photographic representation.”
The catalogue also includes essays from art authorities on some of the underlying themes in the collection. “Art Photography After Photography,” by Nancy Spector, curator of contemporary art at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, gives a comprehensive overview of the role of photographic art in the art world.
“House and Home, Coming and Going: Thoughts on the Scholl Collection,” written by James Rondeau, head of the modern and contemporary art department at the Art Institute of Chicago, explores artists like Dan Graham, Gordon Matta-Clark, Gregory Crewdson and Gregor Schneider and their representation of the middle-class, suburban home.
“Still Moving: Video Art in the Scholl Collection,” by Michael Rush, executive director of PBICA traces the origins of video art and performance and explains their importance to artists like Pipilotti Rist, Janine Antoni, Tacita Dean, Zhang Huan and Bruce Nauman.
Imperfect Innocence will be on display inPBICA’s Mezzanine Gallery and New Media Lounge from April 12 until June 15, 2003.
The Palm Beach Institute of Contemporary Art is located at 601 Lake Ave.
in downtown Lake Worth. Gallery hours are Tuesday through Sunday from noon
until 6:00 p.m. Admission is $3 for adults and $2 for seniors and
students. Children under 12 are free. The museum is open until 8:00 p.m.
on the first and third Fridays of the month and admission is free
between 5:00 and 8:00 p.m.
The exhibitions and programs at PBICA are generously supported by Robert M. and Mary Montgomery.
