12.21.2012 — 02.25.2013
Curator: José Roca
Assistant curator: María Willsa
First major retrospective of Oscar Muñoz (Colombia, 1951) in Latin America. With almost forty years of artistic production, Muñoz is one of the most important names in contemporary art in Colombia. Close to photographic techniques and practices, his work explores themes ranging from light and the fixation of images to individual memory and the need to create a collective memory.
Organized by the Banco de la República Art Museum (MABR) in Bogotá, curated by José Roca and María Wills—assistant curator at the MABR—the exhibition brings together 70 works, including drawings, sculptures, installations, photographs, and videos, which review the most representative periods of his production. It is also the first solo exhibition by a Colombian artist at Malba.
Based on the idea of protography (the reverse of photography, the moment before or after the instant when the image is fixed forever), the exhibition is organized around different themes: the image in flux and the unstable image, the image as an imprint and as a reflection, and the media as the place where the image is configured and undone. All of this is articulated in the context of the city of Cali, which has played a central role in Muñoz's work as a vital environment, atmosphere, and motif of representation.
His work defies media characterization, moving freely between photography, engraving, drawing, installation, video, and sculpture, blurring the boundaries between these practices through the use of innovative processes. “The use of fundamental elements such as water, air, and fire in several of his works refers to the processes, cycles, and transcendental manifestations of life, existence, and death,” explain the curators.
Protographies was first presented at the Luis Ángel Arango Library of the Banco de la República Museum of Art from December to March 2012 and from April to June at the Antioquia Museum of Art in Medellín. The exhibition concludes at Malba in February 2013 and continues its tour at the Lima Museum of Art (MALI) from March to June 2013.
Oscar Muñoz
He was born in Popayán, Colombia, in 1951. He graduated in 1971 from the School of Fine Arts in Cali, a city with a vibrant, multidisciplinary cultural scene that included writers, photographers, filmmakers, and visual artists such as Carlos Mayolo, Luis Ospina, Fernell Franco, and Andrés Caicedo. This was the context and these were Muñoz's interlocutors during his formative period.
Over nearly forty years of production, Oscar Muñoz has developed one of the most subtle and coherent bodies of work in recent Colombian art. Using various techniques and experimenting with different media, this artist has developed a profound artistic reflection on the nature of images. But it was in the early 1990s that his work underwent a radical rethinking of the practice of drawing and engraving, the uses of photography, the relationship between the work and the space in which it is installed, and the role of the viewer and the passage of time in the formation of the image.
His work is included in important public and private collections such as the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; The Daros Collection, Zurich, Switzerland; The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; The CU Art Museum, University of Colorado at Boulder; and Tate Modern in London. In 2006, he opened Lugar a Dudas in the city of Cali, an independent non-profit space that promotes and disseminates contemporary artistic creation through a coordinated process of research, production, and open confrontation.
In 2007, Muñoz was invited to participate in the 52nd Venice International Biennale curated by Robert Storr. Over the last decade, he has held solo and group exhibitions in various international museums and institutions, including O.K. Offenes Kulturhaus, Linz, Austria; Pori Art Museum, Pori, Finland; The Korea Foundation, Seoul, Korea; Museo Extremeño e Iberoamericano de Arte Contemporáneo (MEIAC), Badajoz, Spain; Prefix Institute of Contemporary Art, Toronto, Canada; Institute of International Visual Arts (INIVA), London, England; Museo Tamayo de Arte Contemporáneo, Mexico City, Philagrafika: Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia; Círculo de Bellas Artes, Madrid, Spain; Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art, Hiroshima, Japan; Daros Exhibitions, Zurich, Switzerland; Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, Japan; and the PICA Museum, Perth, Australia. Oscar Muñoz lives and works in Cali, Colombia.
