Hour-long, static-filled tape recordings echoing in the confines of dark galleries; non-narrative video installations; interactive, electronic sculpture displays — multimedia, “conceptual” art is not exactly known for its accessibility. Indeed, the genre is widely considered the reason why many people dismisscontemporary art. Sculptor, video installationist and activist Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle, who lectured in the Allen Art Building this past Thursday, is out to change this.

Known for his socially conscious, technology-based projects such as The El Niño Effect (1999), The Phantom Truck (2007) and White Noise (2007), Manglano-Ovalle works actively to incorporate the political into his non-representative pieces. During the lecture, he described the inspiration, production and reception of his art, manifesting the same convoluted idealism in his talk that is evident in his work.

“I want to have a certain utility in the world. What I consider a failure is when my art is just art,” said Manglano-Ovalle at the start of his lecture. This evocative statement shaped his lengthy address, which was structured around careful explanations of the messages behind several of his more prominent pieces.

Manglano-Ovalle’s description of Search, an immigration-themed piece, was particularly interesting. The work, which transforms Mexico’s northernmost bullfighting ring into what Manglano-The artist describes as a “very low-tech but functioning radio dish,” is meant to serve as an extraterrestrial communication device.  It “searches for the real aliens,” commented Manglano-Ovalle.

Other projects he described included The Phantom Truck, a full-scale model of a mobile biological weapon lab; The El Niño Effect, which looked at “climate as a way to investigate politics” and Always After (the Glass House), a short looping video that explored “the idea that we engage in the world after the [fact].”

Manglano-Ovalle is a professor at the University of Chicago.  His work has been shown everywhere from the Art Institute of Chicago to the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao to the Whitney in New York.