Juan Muñoz: Seven Rooms

“Walking between these figures feels like an interruption; being a spectator is itself a performance. They seem to know more than we do, about the status of being an artwork and the place of the viewer. The joke, if there is one, is on us.” — The Guardian Muñoz's revolutionary oeuvre creates emotional and evocative narratives through sculpture, installation, drawing, writing, and sound. Situating viewers between his work and amongst each other, he creates an intimacy between works of art and viewers. Muñoz thought deeply about art history and in particular the tradition of Spanish painting. Before his untimely death at the age of forty-eight, he produced an extensive, powerfully evocative body of work that uniquely explores the narrative and philosophical possibilities of art. Published on the occasion of the two-floor exhibition at David Zwirner in New York in 2022, this catalogue provides an expansive overview of Muñoz’s career from the 1980s onwards. In an accompanying text, art historian and curator Guillaume Kientz contextualizes Muñoz’s influences within the art-historical canon. Acclaimed writer Siri Hustvedt writes a thoughtful response to the artist’s iconic Conversation Piece. In an imagined interview between Muñoz and himself, Maurizio Cattelan further propels the artist’s artistic momentum and potential in the time before his death. Also featured is a never-before-published interview between Muñoz and the art historian Michael Brenson that took place in 2000, less than one year prior to his untimely death.

About the Author :
Michael Brenson is an art critic and art historian. He is the artistic director of the Jonathan and Barbara Silver Foundation. He was an art critic for The New York Times from 1982-1991. He is a Getty Scholar, Guggenheim Fellow and Clark Fellow, and the recipient of a Whiting Creative Nonfiction Grant. Maurizio Cattelan (b. 1960) is one of the most prominent Italian artists in the world. Over a thirty-year career, his works have highlighted the paradoxes of society and reflect on political and cultural scenarios with great depth and insight. By using iconic images and a caustic visual language, his works spark heated public debate fostering a sense of collective participation. Guillaume Kientz is an art historian and curator, and currently serves as CEO and director of the Hispanic Society Museum and Library. At the Louvre, where he served as a curator in the Department of Paintings for eight years, Kientz developed the revered exhibition Le Mexique au Louvre (2013), bringing Mexican masterpieces to the spotlight for the first time in the institution's history. Vicente Todolí is a Spanish museum director and curator. He is artistic director of Pirelli HangarBicocca, Milan. From 2003 until 2010, he was the director of Tate Modern, where he curated the exhibition Sigmar Polke: History of Everything (2003), with the close involvement of Sigmar Polke.