Christopher Grimes Gallery is pleased to present a solo exhibition by Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle in conjunction with Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA, in which he will present a selection of works from the The Garden of Delights series. The Garden of Delights is an early body of work made from the DNA samples of forty-eight participants – sixteen chosen by the artist, each of whom invited two additional participants with whom they would comprise a triptych. Manglano-Ovalle collaborated with a team of laboratory technicians to create the DNA portraits, which were produced as digital prints.

While the series visually alludes to abstraction, it conceptually engages with 18th century casta paintings – paintings commissioned by Spanish officials in Spain’s American colonies, which depicted the different racial mixtures that derived from the unions between the three major races, Africans, Spaniards and indigenous peoples. In contrast to the familial subject matter of casta paintings, however, Manglano-Ovalle creates communities of chosen relationships, redefining the idea of family, and effectively challenging the idea of identity both aesthetically and socially.

Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle lives and works in Chicago. He will participate in the forthcoming Chicago Architecture Biennial, was the 2012 winner of a USA Fellow Award, the winner of the 2001 MacArthur Fellowship and has been honored with numerous solo exhibitions including The Black Forest, Museo Universidad de Navarra, Pamplona, Spain (2015); Seven Thousand Cords, Chicago Architecture Biennial, Farnsworth House, Plano, IL (2015); Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle: Bird in Space at Mach 10, Ernst Schering Foundation, Berlin, Germany (2013); Always After (The Glass House), The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL (2011); and Gravity is a force to be reckoned with, Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, North Adams, MA (2009). Manglano-Ovalle’s work is in the collections of the Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst (SMAK), Gent, Belgium; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY; Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.; Museo de Arte Contemporaneo, Bilbao, Spain; and Museo Nacional Centro de arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, Spain, among others.