Juan Munoz

As I moved from one room to the next, in the new retrospective show of the Spanish artist Juan Munoz at the Tate Modern I found myself completely drawn into the display. I moved between rooms fast, almost frenetic, wishing to see everything at once, incapable of waiting to slowly pave my way through the exhibition. Instead, I roamed around in full excitement attempting to capture all images in one single panoramic view of Munoz work. I was sitting next to the work on display, staring at it from far away or from close proximity, aiming to get a better, more affectionate look. And, there was no single moment I searched for an explanation, or for information about his work. It seemed unnecessary. It seems the Tate shares my opinion as there is no text on the walls apart from small, very short labels indicating the title of each piece, and a small booklet with more information about the displays in each room - and which visitors are given as they walk in the exhibition space. Admittedly, I never used that booklet while in the exhibition space. It was not until later, when I sat for a cup of coffee, that I became curious about it. I couldn’t help thinking that sometimes art is indeed capable of engaging the visitor in a silent dialogue, consuming her into its space, capturing her imagination and gaze. In cases like this, text becomes a secondary means of communicating the works’ messages, only a complementary means for approaching art.

Juan Munoz’s work is itself engaging through its ironies, humor, and playfulness. Munoz's figures are standing, sitting, facing the wall and staring at mirrors, completely ignoring the presence of the spectator, forcing the viewer to notice them through their presented indifference. His figures are caught in self-indulgence, having their backs towards the viewer, prison in their own spaces, creating the sense they belong to a different reality, outside of one's own, and engaged in an illusionary universe to which they only have access. In the room No10, the work 'Many Times' (1999) comprises of 100 figures, identical in their attire, color and facial characteristics, but yet different in their gestures and posture. They are displayed, either in pairs or in small groups, and are seemingly interacting with each other, forming a dense space of imagined, unattainable communication. The visitor can walk by them, through the empty spaces between the small groups of figures, but she is always left in a space ‘outside.’ The spectator is after all an outsider to the community of gray figurines. They all seem to be laughing, which causes the viewer an immediate smile, a desire to be part of the irony, be part of the imagined joke. I came back to room No10 several times before I leave the exhibition. There was something in that room, which drew me back into it. It was the immediate relation I had with the figures of the work constructed on the basis of difference. I was excluded from the gray community, because of my appearance. I and the rest of the visitors were becoming part of the work, part of the built community of the 100 figures, all sharing the same understanding that we didn’t really belong to that which was unfolding in their silence and fixed positioning.