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拍品专文
Chino con Coletta II exemplifies Juan Muñoz’s mastery of both process-based sculpture as well as his ability to invigorate the genre of figural representation in sculpture. A member of his Chinese Figures series that he created in the 1990s, this uniquely crafted sculpture engages with an invisible presence that denies the viewer any form of participation in the narrative.
This sculpture was executed in 1997, part of a series that the artist modeled on Asian ceramic busts that he observed in a hotel. In a style that is reminiscent of Qin Shi Huang’s Terracotta Army, each of these figures is unique while simultaneously embodying several visual similarities that unify them as a group. At approximately five feet tall, the bronze figure stands upright with one arm hanging loosely by his side and the other drawn over his head, tugging the end of his braid in a playful gesture. A jubilant smile is frozen on his face and establishes an eerie atmosphere that contradicts the spirited nature of the hair-pulling gesture.
Muñoz captures the figure engaging with an invisible companion that leaves the viewer unable to fully comprehend the narrative. The lack of a secondary figure prohibits insight into the emotion in the figure present, and in doing so elucidates feelings of social isolation that contradict his seemingly joyful countenance. In his own words the artist reflects on this emotional void among his sculptural works: “My characters sometimes behave as a mirror that cannot reflect. They are there to tell you something about your looking, but they cannot, because they don't let you see yourself” (J. Muñoz, quoted in P. Schimmel, “An Interview with Juan Muñoz,” Juan Muñoz, Washington, 2001).
The mute figures invite contemplation with the invisible interaction occurring in their midst, leaving them unsettled with the artist’s deliberate lack of information. As James Lingwood summarized: “Rather than declaring power by seeking to control the space around them, [Muñoz's sculptures] withdraw into themselves. Powerless and mute, they embody no universal values, no common truths, they propose no programmes for the future or the past. Friezes or freeze frames of arrested moments or movements, perhaps they are allegories of communication and its failures, of the impasse of language” (J. Lingwood, 'Monologues and Dialogues', Juan Muñoz: Monologues & Dialogues, exh. cat., Palacio de Velázquez, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid 1996- 1997, p.16).
This eerie atmosphere is inherent through Muñoz’s oeuvre, but is strongest among the figures in this series, in particular. Championing a return to the figure that redefines sculptural traditions, Muñoz’s figures’ silence overwhelms the spaces that they occupy. Their stoicism emerges from their frozen gestures that suggest animacy while their isolation from other figures reinforces a sense of despair and loneliness that the artist attributed to the human condition.
A native of Spain, Muñoz’s oeuvre represents a renewed approach to figural representations in sculpture. His early works extrapolated on the de-formalization of the art object that contemporaries such as Bruce Nauman popularized during the 1980s and 1990s, and he received further inspiration from his formal training in both lithography and printmaking while living and studying in London.
With a distinctly Muñoz-ian feel that defies minimalist tendencies and at the same time, refuses to incorporate the viewer into the sculptural dialogue, Chino con Coletta II represents a figure whose seemingly naturalistic disposition is complicated by his absent-minded nature, leaving the viewer to eternally contemplate the veracity of Muñoz’s figures. "Perhaps the more successful things I have made have always been about something other than what you're actually looking at. And this other, this reference, this impossibility of representation that you try to describe is a boundary which confronts the sculpture. The limit that is pointed to by the object…." (J. Muñoz, in: Juan Muñoz. Monologues & Dialogues, exh. cat., Palacio Velazquez, Madrid 1997, p. 126).
This sculpture was executed in 1997, part of a series that the artist modeled on Asian ceramic busts that he observed in a hotel. In a style that is reminiscent of Qin Shi Huang’s Terracotta Army, each of these figures is unique while simultaneously embodying several visual similarities that unify them as a group. At approximately five feet tall, the bronze figure stands upright with one arm hanging loosely by his side and the other drawn over his head, tugging the end of his braid in a playful gesture. A jubilant smile is frozen on his face and establishes an eerie atmosphere that contradicts the spirited nature of the hair-pulling gesture.
Muñoz captures the figure engaging with an invisible companion that leaves the viewer unable to fully comprehend the narrative. The lack of a secondary figure prohibits insight into the emotion in the figure present, and in doing so elucidates feelings of social isolation that contradict his seemingly joyful countenance. In his own words the artist reflects on this emotional void among his sculptural works: “My characters sometimes behave as a mirror that cannot reflect. They are there to tell you something about your looking, but they cannot, because they don't let you see yourself” (J. Muñoz, quoted in P. Schimmel, “An Interview with Juan Muñoz,” Juan Muñoz, Washington, 2001).
The mute figures invite contemplation with the invisible interaction occurring in their midst, leaving them unsettled with the artist’s deliberate lack of information. As James Lingwood summarized: “Rather than declaring power by seeking to control the space around them, [Muñoz's sculptures] withdraw into themselves. Powerless and mute, they embody no universal values, no common truths, they propose no programmes for the future or the past. Friezes or freeze frames of arrested moments or movements, perhaps they are allegories of communication and its failures, of the impasse of language” (J. Lingwood, 'Monologues and Dialogues', Juan Muñoz: Monologues & Dialogues, exh. cat., Palacio de Velázquez, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid 1996- 1997, p.16).
This eerie atmosphere is inherent through Muñoz’s oeuvre, but is strongest among the figures in this series, in particular. Championing a return to the figure that redefines sculptural traditions, Muñoz’s figures’ silence overwhelms the spaces that they occupy. Their stoicism emerges from their frozen gestures that suggest animacy while their isolation from other figures reinforces a sense of despair and loneliness that the artist attributed to the human condition.
A native of Spain, Muñoz’s oeuvre represents a renewed approach to figural representations in sculpture. His early works extrapolated on the de-formalization of the art object that contemporaries such as Bruce Nauman popularized during the 1980s and 1990s, and he received further inspiration from his formal training in both lithography and printmaking while living and studying in London.
With a distinctly Muñoz-ian feel that defies minimalist tendencies and at the same time, refuses to incorporate the viewer into the sculptural dialogue, Chino con Coletta II represents a figure whose seemingly naturalistic disposition is complicated by his absent-minded nature, leaving the viewer to eternally contemplate the veracity of Muñoz’s figures. "Perhaps the more successful things I have made have always been about something other than what you're actually looking at. And this other, this reference, this impossibility of representation that you try to describe is a boundary which confronts the sculpture. The limit that is pointed to by the object…." (J. Muñoz, in: Juan Muñoz. Monologues & Dialogues, exh. cat., Palacio Velazquez, Madrid 1997, p. 126).