Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle, “La Tormenta (The Storm)”...

Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle, “La Tormenta (The Storm)” (2006)

From Chicago Life magazine:

The Spanish-born Chicago artist has exhibited his cloud sculptures in several U.S. venues, but the first storm is coming home to Chicago. Manglano-Ovalle’s sculpture La Tormenta/The Storm is one of two works of public art commissioned through the U.S. General Services Administration’s Art in Architecture Program for the renovation of the 536 South Clark Street Federal Building, Chicago’s new immigration building. The sculpture is scheduled to be unveiled in October in the atrium.

For his Chicago storm, the artist, in collaboration with architect Douglas Garofalo, created two identical clouds, each weighing about 1,500 pounds and composed of 11 fiberglass components covered with titanium alloy foil (with an interior interlocking metal system.) The plan is to set the clouds 24 feet and 16 feet above the atrium floor.

“For me,” states Manglano-Ovalle, “La Tormenta is a metaphor for arrival. The storm arrives as simultaneously destructive and productive forces, unleashing itself on the land below. It is a metaphor for both globalization and migration; it recognizes no borders and envelops all nationalities. La Tormenta is a commemoration of present and historical waves of immigrants. I arrived in this country with my parents and older brother at a very young age. We went through the trauma of documentation several times in buildings much like where La Tormenta hangs now. I don’t do many public art projects, especially in Homeland Security buildings, but this was a chance to use art to make my own statement about arrival, one that I hope to share with the public that uses the building and hence acknowledges their own turbulence and tenacity.”

Posted by bespangled