NEW YORK, NY.- Marian Goodman Gallery announces an exhibition of selected works by Juan Muñoz from 1984-2001 which opened on Tuesday, December 9th and be on view through Saturday, January 31st. The exhibition is curated by Russell Ferguson and is accompanied by a catalogue published on the occasion of the exhibition.
Three key works by Muñoz are being featured: the sculptural installations Thirteen Laughing at Each Other, 2001, Many Times, 1999 and a Figure Hanging from One Foot, 2001. These are 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.
“I sometimes feel that [some of] my work is about waiting, waiting for something to happen; on the one hand afraid in case it does happen, or even wishing that it had never occurred. It is like keeping a work in that state that we would call desire- keeping it at that level of desire, just holding it there that wish, that uncertainty, keeping the work still just here. Or like watching a door which one day a person might open.” -Juan Muñoz in Monologues and Dialogues, 1997
Forthcoming exhibitions in 2015 include a solo exhibition at the Hangar Bicocca, Milan, Italy curated by Vicente Todolí, which will open April 9th and run through August 23rd.
Muñoz’s work has also most recently been shown at Turner Contemporary, Kent, UK (2013) and the Clark Art Institute, Massachusetts (2010). Important retrospectives of his work include those at the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid (2009), Tate Modern, London and the Guggenheim Bilbao, Spain (2008), the Musée de Grenoble Grenoble (2007), K21 Kunstsammlung, Dusseldorf (2006-2007); Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2003), The Art Institute of Chicago (2002), the Contemporary Arts Museum, Houston(2003).
Recent group shows include Manifesta 10 at the State Hermitage Museum, Russia (2014), Damage Control: Art and Destruction Since 1950 at the Kunsthaus Graz, Austria (2014-2015); Kaboom! Comics in Art, Museum fur moderne Kunst, Bremen, Germany (2013); Echoes of Silence, Neon, Athens (2013) and Inside|Out, Speed Art Museum, Louisville, Kentucky (2012).
