Installation view, Oscar Muñoz: Invisibilia, 2021, Phoenix Art Museum. Courtesy of Phoenix Art Museum.
ABOUT THE EXHIBITION
Oscar Muñoz: Invisibilia is the first mid-career survey of Colombian artist Oscar Muñoz’s work in the United States. Although he has had large-scale retrospectives throughout Europe and Latin America, this exhibition will introduce U.S. audiences to a broad scope of his evolving practice. Beginning with his early, stark charcoal drawings from the late 1970s and early 1980s, whose approach to light and shade continued to impact Muñoz’s aesthetic in later photographic and video works, the exhibition will also include approximately 50 exemplary works from his most evocative series created during the late 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s to the present day, including site-specific work, to trace the evolution of his practice. Opening at Phoenix Art Museum in the fall of 2021, Invisibilia will be accompanied by the first comprehensive bilingual catalogue that explores the artist’s work, with contributions by leading scholars in the field.
Since the early 1990s, Muñoz has consistently explored the elusive phenomena of memory and time by lending them visible form, but often only fleetingly—just as we, too, are prone to forgetting. In doing so, he has reinvented the medium of photography, creating hybrid works that splice photographic processes with drawing, printmaking, installation, video, and sculpture, as well as interactive works. This is why, despite being awarded the 2018 Hasselblad Foundation International Award in Photography, Muñoz is not truly a photographer.
IMAGE CREDIT
Oscar Muñoz, Aliento (Breath), 1995. Serigraph on steel disks. Collection of the artist.
Rather than respecting chronology, the exhibition’s structure presents a practice in flux, an artist continuously experimenting with new artistic means as he seeks to define and refine his philosophies by deconstructing the photographic medium. Through Invisibilia, students and visitors of all ages will enjoy active opportunities to engage with themes of history, identity, and social amnesia. Developed in close collaboration with the artist himself, this exhibition encompasses the poetics, the politics, and the philosophical underpinnings of the unstable imagery Muñoz has created, which, nevertheless, becomes indelible in our imaginations.
IMAGE CREDIT
Installation view, Oscar Muñoz: Invisibilia, 2021, Phoenix Art Museum. Courtesy of Phoenix Art Museum.
EXHIBITION SPONSORS
Oscar Muñoz: Invisibilia is co-organized by Phoenix Art Museum and the Blanton Museum of Art. Its Phoenix premiere is made possible through the generosity of The Diane & Bruce Halle Foundation, Carl & Marilynn Thoma Foundation, The Joan Cremin Exhibition Endowment, and Sicardi | Ayers | Bacino, with additional support from the Museum’s Circles of Support and Museum Members.
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Phoenix Art Museum to premiere first U.S. retrospective of Colombian artist Oscar Muñoz featuring drawings, installations, and photographic and video works
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