Juan Muñoz

A Retrospective

27 mei 2008
5 okt 2008

he Guggenheim Museum Bilbao will be staging the most important retrospective exhibition in Spain of works by Juan Muñoz (Madrid, 1953 - Ibiza, 2001), widely considered one of the world's finest contemporary sculptors and installation artists.

With:

Curated by Sheena Wagstaff -Chief Curator at Tate Modern- this exhibition is organized by Tate Modern, London, in association with the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao. The second floor of the museum will host the most outstanding works from Muñoz's entire career, and will include a number of extra works for the Bilbao venue, throwing new light on the complex nature of his artistic endeavors.

With a selection of nearly 80 works, including sculptures, installations, drawings, radio works and writings, the selection reveals some neglected aspects of the Madrid-born artist's broad, innovative register.

From his early architectural works-staircases, balconies and banisters-located in impossible settings, by way of his optical floors that dissolve the limits of space and time, to his dramatic, theatrical installations involving groups of human figures that evoke the solitude of the individual in society, Muñoz's works play with the spectator, enticing him into relating to them, even awaking feelings of unease and isolation. Muñoz described himself as "a narrator", and his ability to propose new forms of contemplation and thought, to create tension between the illusory and the real, made him one of the few artists capable of renewing contemporary sculpture.