Whilst alienating a spectator in art is nothing new, it’s a very difficult sensation to successfully capture, time and again, without seeming tiresome or unnecessarily provocative. It’s something Jake and Dinos Chapman have down pat with their paradoxically brilliant but vulgar sculptures that make one stare and want to look away at the same time. And it’s this same quality that makes the work of Juan Muñoz so uncomfortably addictive.
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Muñoz died very suddenly of a stomach haemorrhage in August 2001, the year in which he took over Tate Modern’s cavernous Turbine Hall with ‘Double Bind’, his last installation on any great scale. It’s fitting then that his first official retrospective should be back at Tate Modern, showing over 90 pieces including several previously unseen works.
Walking amongst his sculptures and installations several conflicting emotions take hold. Drama and theatricality through human interaction (or notable lack of it) are at the root of nearly all his work and is used in such a way as to draw in the viewer and alienate them at the same time.
‘Many Times’ is a room filled with grey, identical men of Asian origin, standing in small groups animatedly grimacing. So human and yet so unrealistic, expressive and at the same time expressionless, walking through them one feels like an outsider at a party, sure that once you leave the room the chatter will begin again.
Often it’s what’s missing in his work that makes it so powerful: a blink in staring eyes, mouths mid-chatter that never close, an empty stage with a dwarf in a prompter’s box, waiting for action. And often it’s the spectator that completes the work, but equally is never able to feel a part of it: a distressing but deeply clever sensation to elicit, and one for which Muñoz will be remembered.
INFORMATION
- Event dates
- 24 January 2008 to 27 April 2008
- Website
- http://www.tate.org.uk
- Telephone
- 44.20 7887 8888
- Address
- Tate Modern
Bankside
London SE1
