Juan Muñoz. In the Violet Hour

From June 17th, 2023 to January 7th, 2024

Museo Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo

Avda. Constitución, 23. Móstoles. Madrid. Spain

Conceived as a circulatory narrative in an enchanted museum, the exhibition looks at the first decade of Juan Muñoz's career and recovers many of his early works.

In the 1980s, his artistic practice was marked by a threefold intention: to recover the human figure for statuary from a non-expressionist plastic, to experiment with the emotional repertoire of the exhibition regime and to reflect on the theatrical possibilities of the installation. The complexity of Juan Muñoz's spatial narratives begins with his interest in minarets, watchtowers, balconies and other architectures conceived for the elevated gaze of power but also for the projection of the voice. His interest in narrative speculation unfolds in a whole series of works centred on the sinister everyday, from his menacing, decontextualised handrails —guiding architectures that have lost their object— to the so-called Raincoat, or mackintosh drawings, which depict domestic spaces in white on a black background, views of icy Gothic interiors.

The exhibition culminates with several of the masterpieces that consolidated his fame, optical floor installations where theatricality serves to stress the physical and psychological reaction of visitors to an exhibition, such as The Waste Land, Souffleur or Arti et Amicitiae, revived for the first time since its installation in 1988.

This exhibition is a continuation of the one we were able to enjoy until a few days ago at the Sala Alcalá 31: Juan Muñoz. Everything I See Will Outlive Me, which included some of the most iconic pieces conceived and produced by Muñoz between the 1990s and 2001. The last decade of Muñoz's production was marked by his mastery of space in a neo-baroque conception and by the recovery of the human figure as the central element of his work. His existentialist vocation, his emotional quality and his vindication of the trick, of the suspension of disbelief, determined fiction as a fundamental characteristic of contemporary art, advancing the speculative turn that will be paradigmatic of art in the 21st century.

Curated by Manuel Segade, both exhibition projects commemorate the 70th anniversary of the artist's birth.

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