One Laughing at the Other

‘Two men are sitting in tubular frame chairs mounted on the wall above eye level. Like all of Juan Muñoz’s figures, they are entirely monochromatic. Their clothing looks as if it had been ‘striped’ by the teeth of a comb and resembles prison garb. While their extremely similar faces are moulded naturalistically, their hands look like rubber gloves filled with water. One of the figures is leaning back while the other is leaning forward, and both of them are obviously laughing uproariously. Only there is no sound. However, out of the mouth of the figure on the left, little bronze figures emerge instead of sound, and wind from his face to his hand in an odd procession. The title of this work is One Laughing At The Other. But who is laughing at whom? And what has provoked this uninhibited laughter? The work gives no hint. Moreover, the fact that the chairs float above the viewer creates a physical distance between the viewer and the figures that seem to inhabit a remote imaginary stage – or perhaps a balcony. Early on, Muñoz once said of his notion of distance between the viewer and the work: ‘It should … remain separate from you. So no matter how much you look at it, it’s still outside of you … What’s interesting in theatre is that you cannot answer back. And then the curtains close and you leave. A piece should have that capacity, that you cannot answer back to it’. Thus, the viewer must face the fact that the work does not ask for his help in constituting its meaning. Muñoz goes even further in the same interview: ‘I like to believe that the best work can exist without a spectator. If it’s anything to do with theatre, it’s more to do with the rehearsal than the performance. It’s happening between the players, it has nothing to do with the audience’. (B. J. Scheuermann, quoted in J. Heynen & V. Liebermann (eds.), Juan Muñoz – Rooms of My Mind, exh. cat., K21 Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf, 2006, p. 158).