Malba – Fundación Costantini Presents Oscar Muñoz: Protografías

Using simple processes derived from photography coupled with engraving, drawing, installation, video and sculpture, the artist explores multifaceted themes such as the subjectivity of individual memory, and the difficulty and need for the creation of collective memory.

The exhibition, organized by the Museo de Arte del Banco de la República (MABR) in Bogotá, and curated by José Roca and Maria Wills, consists of seventy pieces in different media: drawings, sculptures, installations, photographs and videos, that foreground representative phases of Muñoz’ career. Conceived from the idea of protografía – the instant before a photographic image is forever fixed – the exhibition is presented around various themes: the flowing and the unstable image, image as imprint and reflection, and the grounding of the place in which an image is both configured and/or vanishes.

The limits of memory

Cali has always played a vital role in Muñoz’ work. Throughout the exhibition, the city alternately plays the role of backdrop, content and context – environment as both atmosphere and a mode of representation. Initially Muñoz did large format drawings that explore the decadent ambiance of Inquilinatos, shared dwellings in Cali . Inquilinatos (1976-78) and Interiores (1976-1981) posses a strong psychological impact influenced by the artistic, cultural and social effervescence of that time. In speaking about this early work and the atomizing nature of its subject matter Muñoz says: “Ciudad Solar was a collective and experimental meeting space, key for all its creators, who consolidated as the Grupo de Cali: Ramiro Arbeláez, Andrés Caicedo, Eduardo Carvajal, Hernando Guerrero, Carlos Mayolo and Luis Ospina. There were exhibitions and also a cinema club.”

Key characteristics of these early studies are evident in later works, including an ongoing interest in the social sphere, technical mastery and mercurial use of media. Muñoz’ use of photography, for instance, is at once an investigation of the possibilities of light and shadow in relation to the image, and a reflection on the limitations of the medium as a tool for associative memory.

During the mid-eighties, Muñoz abandoned traditional techniques like drawing on paper and engraving on metal and began a period of experimentation. It wasn’t until the first years of the nineties, however, when a clear, new and radical approach to drawing, photography and engraving begin to question the relationship between the work and the space in which it is shown, the role of the viewer and the element of time in the formation of an image. Cortinas (1985-86) and Narcisos (1995-2001) are the result of such investigations, experimenting with elements such as water and charcoal by working with their elemental nature, going as far as to employ water as the foundation of a drawing that decomposes. “The Narcisos, paradoxically, invert the idea of the portrait as a way to eternize a unique instant into a continuous transformation over time,” explains the artist.

In Colombia, the end of the eighties and beginning of the nineties also coincide with—and were characterized by—the “Cartels war,” a deadly, unending clash between competing drug dealers in cities like Cali and Medellín. Created during this time, Ambulatorio (1994-2008), is the first work encountered in the exhibition at Malba. It is an aerial photograph of Cali, covered by shattered safety glass (36 modules), and displayed on the ground. Elaborating on this method of display, Muñoz says, “The photographic image loses its definition, turning into a big cloudy visualization, but at the same time, into a big surface to be perceived and felt while walking on it.” This is just one example of the artist’s intentionally ambiguous relationship with space as dictated by subject matter.

When talking about his work, Muñoz also recognizes that there is not a direct trajectory but several central concerns that ebb and flow over time, some thematic and others formal. For instance, in his latest works, Impresiones débiles (2011), fragile serigraphs in coal dust of newspaper images that resemble his Tiznados series (1990-91), the very matter – the materiality – of the dust is key: his interest lies in the instant and mental processes that need to take place for an image to “consolidate, or not, in memory.”

“Protografías” was first exhibited at the Biblioteca Luis Angel Arango, Museo de Arte del Banco de la República, from December 2011 to March 2012, and from April to June 2012 at the Museo de Arte de Antioquia, Medellín. The exhibition concludes at Malba in February 2013 and will travel to the Museo de Arte de Lima (MALI), where it will be on display from March to June 2013.

....................

Oscar Muñoz: Protografías

Until February 25, 2013

Malba – Fundación Costantini