A comprehensive look into the fascinating life and enduring legacy of Juan Muñoz and his enigmatic installations
“Walking between these figures feels like an interruption; being a spectator is itself a performance. They seem to know more than we do, about the status of being an artwork and the place of the viewer. The joke, if there is one, is on us.” —The Guardian
Muñoz’s revolutionary oeuvre evokes emotional narratives through sculpture, installation, drawing, writing, and sound. Situating viewers between his work and among one another, he creates an intimacy between art and its audience. Muñoz thought deeply about art history and, in particular, the tradition of Spanish painting. Before his untimely death at the age of forty-eight, he produced an extensive, powerfully evocative body of work that uniquely explores the narrative and philosophical possibilities of art.
Published on the occasion of the exhibition at David Zwirner, New York, in 2022, this catalogue provides an expansive overview of Muñoz’s career from the 1980s onward. In an accompanying text, the art historian and curator Guillaume Kientz contextualizes Muñoz’s influences within the art-historical canon. The acclaimed writer Siri Hustvedt contributes a thoughtful response to the artist’s iconic Conversation Piece. In an imagined interview between Muñoz and himself, Maurizio Cattelan further propels the artist’s momentum and potential in the time before his death. Also featured is a never-before-published interview between Muñoz and the art historian Michael Brenson that took place in 2000.
