JUAN MUÑOZ
2014-12-29Three key works by Muñoz will be featured: the sculptural installations Thirteen Laughing at Each Other, 2001, Many Times, 1999 and a Figure Hanging from One Foot, 2001. These will be accompanied by works on paper and early wall sculptures. Including works such as empty or occupied balconies, isolated figures, and those laughing and in conversation, this group of works often puts viewers in an ambiguous position, looking but also seemingly being looked at. The work suggests, as Russell Ferguson writes, “the tension between the comfort of the group and the desire for individual autonomy.”
Regarded as one of the most important sculptors of his generation, Juan Muñoz was known for his return to the human form in art and for his emphasis on the relationship of sculpture, architecture and the viewer. In sculptures, drawings, ‘conversation pieces’, and immersive installations, he often placed the viewer in dramatic relationship to space and objects that were at once architectural and implied narrative or silence, a sense that something had happened or was about to happen. His sources ranged from literature, architecture, mythology, to music, film, theater, poetry. Ever the storyteller, his artistic activity extended to plays for radio and theater, writings and essays. Frequently, Muñoz’s sculptural tableaux offer the viewer an experience of physical passage through interior spaces, suggesting a psychological landscape of presence and distance, labyrinths and solitudes, urbanscapes and empty interiors, the collective and the individual.
Opposite – Thirteen laughing at each other (2001)
Exhibition runs through to January 29th, 2015
Marian Goodman Gallery
24 West 57th Street
New York
NY 10019
