SANTA MONICA, CA.- Christopher Grimes Gallery announces two solo exhibitions in conjunction with Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA’s participating gallery program. In the main gallery, Miguel Rio Branco is presenting a selection of photographs from the Out of Nowhere series. Rio Branco is renowned for his dramatic use of color and the intimacy and complexity of his subject matter: direct, often brutal photographs of marginalized communities in Brazil. His photo-essay, Out of Nowhere, delves inside the Santa Rosa Boxing Academy in Rio de Janeiro, where former prostitutes, street youths, and people of all backgrounds would flock to train. The photographs, which were originally captured in the early 1990s and were first exhibited under the title Out of Nowhere at the 1994 Havana Bienal, depict the boxers at the academy while focusing on the pervading transcendental atmosphere of the space rather than the individual subjects.

In the South Gallery, Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle is presenting 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 fortyeight 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.

Miguel Rio Branco lives and works in Petrópolis, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. His work cuts across the worlds of cinema, photography, photojournalism, and social and political criticism. His photographs and films are included in such esteemed collections as the Centre Georges Pompidou, SFMOMA, the Walker Art Center and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. He has had numerous solo and group shows internationally, including Miguel Rio Branco: When I die I will take nothing, Museu de Arte de São Paulo, Brazil (2017), Miguel Rio Branco: Gritos Surdos, Casa França-Brasil, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (2015), the 34th Panorama of Brazilian Art, Museum of Contemporary Art, São Paulo, Brazil (2015); Made in Brazil, Casa Daros, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (2015); and Out of Nowhere, a retrospective survey with nine installations, Groninger Museum, Groninger, Netherlands (2006). Rio Branco has been a correspondent for Magnum since 1980 and his work has been published in magazines such as Aperture, National Geographic, and Photo Magazine.

Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle lives and works in Chicago, where his work is currently on view in the Chicago Architecture Biennial. He 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.