Last Saturday, I visited Juan Muñoz’s magnificent and intriguing sculptures for the third time, at the Museo Reina Sofía in Madrid. I first saw them at the Guggenheim in Bilbao last summer, and then a month ago, when I wasn’t allowed to take pictures. This time I was, for some unknown and mysterious reason, provided I didn’t use flash photography (it seems permission is given depending on the shift, as you can see, criteria don’t seem to be consistent).
I don’t know what kind of magnetism it is that attracts me to this sculptor’s work, but it does, he is one of my favorites, you could say my favorite amongst living sculptors, since others such as Chillida, Moore, Giacometti, Rondín, Lobo, J. González, Picasso… are no longer among us. Even so, I don’t know what would happen if they were still alive, maybe Muñoz would still be my favorite.
I try to analyze the reasons for my fascination and I believe it could be called conversation, and it seems that now the word conversation is back into fashion: everything that is successful today includes a conversation traveling in two directions, and sometimes in multiple directions, conversations which make you participate and converse with ideas, innovations, social networks, new media, all is experiencing a transformation that resembles more a revolution. The conversation revolution, in which companies want to communicate with their customers, stockholders and suppliers, and begin to learn how to do so. New technologies bring people together -in a way previously unimaginable- allowing for this dialogue, a key part in innovative processes. Well then, that afternoon two highly innovative elements converged during my visit.
The first element was a real surprise, a visit to the terraced roof of the Reina Sofía Museum, the new annex designed by Jean Nouvel, winner of the Pritzker Prize 2008, the Nobel Prize of architects. It was brimming with visitants that came and went, marveled by a spectacle of such beauty, with elements reflecting off the bordeaux red lacquer, on one side Madrid, its houses and rooftops, its towers, but also the visitants, the walls and the building’s spaces, both filled or empty. A true visual marvel. I was startled and entranced by such architectural beauty. Nouvel is a true innovator, his projects are different from each other, integrate in the surroundings and incorporate the citizen. Nouvel knows how to establish perfect spacial dialogues, between us and his heavy but, at the same time, featherweight structures.
What struck me most was the dialogue or conversation established between people making their way through the terraces, the rooftops, the glass walls, who, against the sunset, magically transform into small black silhouettes, like Chinese shadow figures that move as if performing a harmonious choreography, interweaving dynamically before a static, color background. The resulting contrast is truly fantastic. Projected, brought out of a magician’s hat, a special relationship is created between the transparency, the light, the reflections, mirrors and shadows.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Nouvel for more information
And since an image speaks a thousand words, here are some pictures I took that afternoon:
The second element were Juan Muñoz’s sculptures, where we find ourselves before a group of small men -compared to a real-scale man- who seem to be in animated conversation amongst each other, smiling, or with expressions of active and profound listening. We walk between them, negotiating a labyrinth of oriental features and we believe we are part of the dialogue; that we too are really conversing with them. We invent imaginary conversations and the truth is it is surprising, as well as soothing and enjoyable, to see them living in our same space and time. Muñoz plays with us, presenting contradictions that force us to think without cease, on the tangible and intangible, opposites, loneliness or crowds, the coldness of certain materials and the warmth of the expressions, those sculptures have no feet, they end at the hem of their pants, mobility is impossible but it seems they can move with ease. He plays with the lack of communication and with the dialogue. With the importance of the comnversation.
It seems that art critics are calling Muñoz’s sculptures narrative sculptures, because they tell a story, and he is a reference in the process of innovation that is taking place in contemporary sculpture. His conversation is between the real and the virtual, magic and illusion. This work is considered his greatest achievement, and has impressed me more than any other of his works. It is called Double Bind, because we establish a double bind with each of its elements.
http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juan_Mu%C3%B1oz_%28escultor%29 for more information
And here are the pictures of Muñoz’s sculptures:
Great ideas that have given rise to these two works of art. I invite you to see them and to converse with them, if you happen to be in Madrid, they won’t let you down. Innovative art.
