munoz booklet

8/6/2019 Munoz Booklet

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Oscar Muoz:Imprints for a Fleeting Memorial

March 12- June 5, 2011


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Oscar MuozImprints for a Fleeting Memorial

Colombian artist Oscar Muoz has developed an important body of work

investigating the status of the image in relation to memory. Regarded as oneof the most significant contemporary visual artists in his native country, he hasalso, in recent years, captivated audiences in the international sphere.

Spanning more than three decades, Muozs practice defies easycategorization. He moves freely between photography, printmaking, drawing,installation, video and sculpture, effectively blurring the boundaries betweenmedia through unconventional and unprecedented processes. Muozexperiments with several techniques in what he calls image-making in anexpanded field, innovating processes on improbable substrates includingsilk-screen on water, airbrush drawing on dripping-wet Mylar, and screen-printing with grease on mirrors. He is also renowned for his use of fire tocreate images by following the dot-matrix pattern of photolithography.

The artists decision to abandon traditional applications of artistic media whilestill employing their formats and techniques even occasionally incorporatingself-destructive mechanisms has resulted in a body of work that is as muchgrounded in the intrinsic qualities of the materials employed as in the poeticassociations they embody.

Instability in Muozs work is related more to the ways in which memory itself works, than with the devices that humankind has invented in its futile attemptsto fix it. Monuments and memorials whose task is to fix memory (serving as

instruments to commemorate the event in the future), are usually so dependenton the historical context that they gradually lose their ability to embody whatthey commemorate. The ephemeral and unstable image of Muozs works,always oscillating between presence and absence, is paradoxically moreefficient as a memorial/monument, since it addresses the ephemeral natureof human existence, memory and history. His work transcends the specificanecdote, as well as the particular and defined historical fact, to allude to thehuman condition and the fragility of life itself.

Jos RocaExhibition Curator

Cover Image:Line of Destiny , Video, 2006


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Re/tratoVideo installation2003

Re/trato presents a self-portrait of the artist that is being constructedincessantly, without beginning or end. The medium used to draw the image(water), and the support (a concrete slab in hot sunlight), conspire against thestability of the image, which starts to disappear the moment it is created.Re/trato has a double meaning in Spanish, including both portrait and I tryagain. Reflecting this dichotomy, the piece references portraiture, constancyand attempt as Muoz labors to define an ephemeral image that persists indisappearing.


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Project for a Memorial Video installation

200405Project for a Memorial records a hurried, jittery hand sketching a series of portraits with water on a tombstone. As they near completion, the portraits begin to fade as the sun warms the tombstone and dries the water. Theotherwise anonymous portraits in thisProjectare photographs of deceasedpeople published in newspaper obituaries. Speaking to a more fragile, fleetingand human form of memorial, this work emphasizes the role of time, absenceand dissolution in the processes of remembering and/or forgetting.

Line of Destiny Video installation2006

In Line of Destiny Muoz synthesizes many themes from his recent practice

including the relationship between photography and its fixation, as wellas permanence and memory. It is inspired by the classical Greek myth of Narcissus, where the title figure grows increasingly obsessed with the beautyof his reflection in a pool of water. While Narcissus is frozen in his gaze eventually wasting away into death Muoz stares into a far more tenuouspool of water contained in his own hand. The reflected image is constantlymaking and unmaking itself as the water drains through his fingers, revealinga fluid portrait that, in the end, is inevitably lost.


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Narcissus12 C-prints20012002

NarcissusVideo installation20012002

Narcissusis a video self-portrait and series of photographs rendered by siftingcharcoal dust into a bathroom sink filled with water. The image is recordedas the water goes slowly down the drain a process that reveals two faces:one formed by the drawing itself, and one by its shadow on the bottom of thesink. As the water recedes, the two images coincide, as if time would givethe individual the opportunity to come to terms with the self (a metaphorfor the ongoing search for understanding). Just as the two images are aboutto converge, the water drains almost entirely and the drawing becomesdistorted, eventually disappearing.


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NarcissiScreen-prints on water, charcoal powder, Plexiglas1991/2009

The works in this series are the result of charcoal dust sifted through a photo-serigraphic screen (prepared with a self-portrait of the artist) onto the surfaceof shallow containers full of water. The image floats on the surface, suspendedprecariously in an imminent process of change and destruction. While thewater slowly evaporates, the continuously distorting image descends andadheres to the bottom of the container finally losing its mutable characterwhen the water is fully evaporated. Muoz sees the three aspects of thisprocess when the dust touches the water and is turned into an image; thechanges it undergoes during evaporation; and when the dust finally adheres tothe bottom of the container alluding to the three definite moments of being:

creation, life and death.BiographiesVideo installation2002

In BiographiesMuoz reclaims images of the deceased which otherwise wouldhave faded into oblivion. In each video projection he depicts a persons face byscreen-printing charcoal dust onto the surface of water contained in a sink.Rather than being synchronized, the images interact in a continuous ebb &flow. As such, some of them are disappearing as the water flows down thedrain, while others reverse this process showing a blotch of ink emergingfrom the drain, reconfiguring itself into the original portrait. By looping thevideo, Biographiesenacts life, decay, death and resurrection in a perpetualcycle.


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PixelsSugar cubes, coffee, Plexiglas19992000

In this work, nine pixelated portraits are constructed with sugar cubes

impregnated with varying saturations of coffee. Arranged into facial patterns,they allude to the decayed life of equally anonymous human beings muchlike the ones that clandestinely inhabit this and other spaces. Between thetension of showing without showing, of invisibility and recognition, this seriesof images struggles between the sweet and the bitter of the matter that formsthem.

PastiempoNewsprint, folded into 6 newspapers, burnt with a burnishingimplement2007

The title Pastiempois a neologism formed from the names of two Colombiannewspapers:El Tiempo(The Times), the main national newspaper, andEl Pas (The Country), the main newspaper in the city of Cali. The work consistsof images from the front page of each newspaper, replicated in a blown-updot matrix pattern with the aid of a burning tool. The image is patientlyand laboriously transferred to the newsprint dot by dot, and the viewer isencouraged to browse the pages as you would a newspaper. When one reachesthe end pages, they are almost completely blank. As a result of the acceleratedstream of information we receive daily, news becomes history in the momentit is recorded. In the process, the same news slowly becomes obsolete with thepassing of each day.


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PalimpsestoMirror, etched glass

2003The relationship between self and the other is invoked inPalimpsesto a dual-sided, handheld mirror where the artist has removed part of its reflectivesurface. When two people hold the mirror, the physiology of sight does notallow the eye to focus simultaneously on that which lays before, and behind,the glass. The observers attention is thus constantly oscillating between his/her reflected image and the image of the other perceived through the mirror.Speaking to a confused, but more collective consciousness, Muoz notes,their faces are superimposed on the mirrors surface; that is to say, each onesees himself onthe other.

Intervals (While I Breathe)Paper, burnt with cigarettes2004

Using a lit cigarette to draw the image, this series consists of six self-portraitsof the artist. Inhaling the smoke kindles the fire that the artist uses to createthe image, while also adding to the eventual death of the body that breathesit. This work therefore constitutes itself in the flow from body to hand, fromhand to image, and from image back again to the body. With every added dot/hole, Muoz authors a beautiful, but terrible metaphor of the short interval between life and death.


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Narcissus12 C-prints52 cm x 70 cm each200102Courtesy the artist and GaleraAlcuadrado (Bogot)

NarcissusVideo installation3:00 minutes200102Courtesy the artist and GaleraAlcuadrado (Bogot)

PixelsSugar cubes, coffee, Plexiglas9 elements, 35 x 35 x 3 cm each19992000Courtesy the artist, Galera Alcuadrado(Bogot) and Sicardi Gallery (Houston)

PastiempoNewsprint, folded into 6 newspapers, burnt with a burnishing implementVariable dimensions2007Courtesy the artist and GaleraAlcuadrado (Bogot)

NarcissiScreen-prints on water, charcoalpowder, Plexiglas

7 containers, 35 x 35 x 7 cm each1991/2009Courtesy the artist and GaleraAlcuadrado (Bogot)

BiographiesVideo installation3 elements, 2:302:45 minutes each2002Courtesy the artist and Galera Alcuadrado(Bogot)

Re/tratoVideo installation28:45 minutes2003Courtesy the artist and Galera Alcuadrado(Bogot)

PalimpsestoMirror, etched glassVariable dimensions2003Courtesy the artist and Galera Alcuadrado(Bogot)

Intervals (While I Breathe)Paper, burnt with cigarettes6 drawings, 60 cm x 50 cm each2004Courtesy the artist and Galera Alcuadrado(Bogot)

Project for a Memorial Video installation7:39 minutes200405Courtesy the artist and Galera Alcuadrado(Bogot)

Line of Destiny Video installation1:56 minutes2006Courtesy the artist and Galera Alcuadrado(Bogot)

Oscar MuozImprints for a Fleeting Memorial Curated by Jos RocaCirculated by Prefix Institute of Contemporary Art, Toronto

Prefix gratefully acknowledges the assistance of the Toronto Arts Council andthe Canada Council for the Arts.

Exhibition Checklist


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Artist's Biography

Oscar Muoz

Oscar Muoz (b.1951 Popayn, Columbia) lives and works in Cali, Columbia. Inthe last five years, Oscar Muoz's work has experienced a monumental crossoverinto Europe and North America, with group shows across Europe and the UnitedStates, and acquisitions of his work by the Tate Modern, L.A. MOCA, the MiamiArt Museum, the Hirshhorn Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, andLa Caixa in Barcelona, among others. Muoz participation in the 52nd VeniceBiennale in 2007 was widely regarded as a highlight of the event. His travelling

exhibition Imprints for a Fleeting Memorial received the 2008 Exhibition Designand Installation Award from the Ontario Association of Art Galleries when it waspresented at Prefix ICA.

Curator's Biography

Jos Roca

Jos Roca is a Colombian curator working out of Bogot and Philadelphia, wherehe was the Artistic Director of Philagrafika 2010. He managed the arts program atthe Banco de la Repblica in Bogot for a decade, establishing it as one of the mostrespected institutions in Latin America.

Roca was a co-curator of the San Juan Poly/Graphic Triennial, Puerto Rico (2004),

the 27th Bienal de So Paulo, Brazil (2006), the Encuentro Internacional Medelln,Colombia (2007), and of Cart(ajena), a series of urban interventions in Cartagena,Colombia (2007). He was a jury member for the 52nd Venice Biennial (2007).

Recent curatorial projects include: Muntadas:Mechanisms of the Image, Pinacotecado Estado de So Paulo, Brazil (upcoming 2010); Vlparaso, a series of urbaninterventions in Valparaso, Chile (upcoming 2010);Other Florae, Galeria Nara

Roesler, So Paulo, Brazil (2008);Phantasmagoria: Specters of Absence, travellingexhibition co-organized by iCI and the Museo de Arte del Banco de la Repblica(200709); Botnica Poltica, Sala Montcada/La Caixa, Barcelona (2004); andTracesof Friday: Art, Tourism, Displacement, ICA, Philadelphia (2003).


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Southeastern Center forContemporary Art

750 Marguerite DriveWinston-Salem, NC 27106

T 336 725 1904 F 336 722 6059www.secca.org

Hanes Home

Entrance

Potter Gallery American Gothic: Aaron Spangler and Alison Elizabeth Taylor (Apr. 21-

Aug. 21, 2011)

Main GalleryOscar Mu oz: Imprints for a Fleeting Memorial

Overlook GalleryOscar Mu oz: Imprints

for a Fleeting Memorial

Auditorium

The Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art (SECCA) in Winston-Salem is an affiliate of the North Carolina Museum of Art, adivision of the N.C. Department of Cultural Resources, the state agency with the mission to enrich lives and communities, and thevision to harness the states cultural resources to build North Carolinas social, cultural and economic future. Information on CulturalResources is available 24/7 at www.ncculture.com. SECCA is also a funded partner of The Arts Council of Winston-Salem and ForsythCounty. Additional funding is provided by the James G. Hanes Memorial Fund.

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