Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle

As part of the Gallery Weekend Berlin 2009, Galerie Thomas Schulte presents Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle’s first solo show in Berlin. The centerpieces of the exhibi-tion are the installation Untitled (Bomb) and the new video Juggernaut. The opening reception will be held from 7 to 9 pm on Friday, April 24, the artist will be present.

Untitled (Bomb) is a full-scale reproduction of Fat Man, the second atomic bomb used in history, detonated by the United States over Nagasaki in 1945. Unlike the original, the reproduction is painted with white car varnish and splattered with mud.

Just as a sullied sports car forfeits some of its precious appearance, the bomb here almost loses its threatening aspect. A humorous reflection of the artist’s strategy for the installation exhibited at Documenta XII, Phantom Truck, an accurate reproduction of the mobile laboratory for biological weapons presented in a Power Point presentation by former US Secretary of State Colin Powell before the UN Security Council as evidence of the Iraqi government’s possession and production of weapons of mass destruction, Untitled (Bomb) now turns reality relations upside down: unlike Phantom Truck, which never really existed but was just an invention to justify the US attack of Iraq, Untitled (Bomb) is a copy of a weapon of mass destruction that was actually developed and used. But now, in a version that makes clear the interest of the artist in the ethical dilemma of aesthetics: “What’s beautiful and what’s monstrous, or are they so intertwined you can’t locate either one of them? When I make a beautiful cloud, I still want people to think of a nuclear explosion.”