Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle: A Want for Nothing
Discreetly taped to one wall within Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle’s show of new sculptures, photographs, and site-specific installations is a single sheet of gray paper upon which is printed THE POVERTY OF AN OBJECT IS ITS STRENGTH. This statement—a paraphrasing of a quote by Thomas Merton, a Trappist monk, writer, and activist—assigns value and freedom to an existence based on minimal needs. It is also the conceptual prompt that informs the artist’s current explorations of the sociopolitical dimensions of an object’s form and utility, restated as “A Want for Nothing,” his exhibition at the DePaul Art Museum.