Juan Muñoz

Marian Goodman Gallery, New York

Private Collection, Oslo

Peder Lund, Oslo 

Acquired from the above by the present owner 

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Action and stasis vie for attention in this beguiling sculpture by Juan Muñoz, Piggyback (2 Chinese Laughing). It is at once unsettling, in its slipping precarious pose and jarring preclusive content, and reassuring, in its elegant bronze execution and deft recollection of a rich vein of art historical precedent. It should be considered amongst the best of Muñoz’s praxis in its playful mood, liberal evocation of absurdity, and resolute resistance to facile interpretation. Across the entirety of its bold form, Muñoz encourages us to question the fundamentals of human interaction, and interrogate the role of communication within our own world.

From the 1980s onwards, Juan Muñoz manipulated and appropriated approximations of the human body in order to question the boundaries of traditional art, and evoke eloquently defined notions of absurdity and unease. The present work stems from the Piggyback series which can be viewed as a climactic moment within this particular creative endeavour. Indeed, Muñoz has created multiple permutations of this motif, varying the roles and relationships between his two characters ‘Caucasian’ and ‘Chinese’, in each version. We might observe Caucasian on Caucasian (now held in the permanent collection of the Speed Art Museum in Kentucky), Chinese on Caucasian, Caucasian on Chinese, and Chinese on Chinese – the present work. In each of these sculptures, Muñoz imbues the figures with a distinct sense of ‘otherness’ and uneasy absurdity through the use of isolated and incomplete narrative. For example, in the present iteration of the motif, although the figures are physically engaged, they seem disorientated in their interaction and wear generic matching expressions. They are not presented as individual characters with distinct appearances and personalities, but are rather reduced to racial types with predetermined emotions. In further consideration of their scale, slightly smaller than lifesize, and their ungainly and baggy clothes, they are rendered almost entirely absurd. Conversely, it is precisely this absurdity, this infeasibility and separation from the viewer’s reality which makes Muñoz’s figures so engaging. The closer we examine the work, the more we understand its lack of humanity and uncanny sense of difference. In the words of the curator James Lingwood: “It’s the work’s absolute obliviousness to anything outside of itself which paradoxically creates the condition for the spectator’s absorption into the world of the work… physical proximity does not bring a greater closeness; it creates a greater distance. Being amidst the work creates a powerful sense of apartness” (James Lingwood, Juan Munoz: Monologues & Dialogues, Madrid 1996, p. 16).

In purely technical terms, the vividness of the human scenario in this work is striking. With the lower man rising up onto the tips of his toes, the carried figure clutches on with both arms and the whole composition seems to teasingly teeter forwards in a manner that demands our immediate engagement. Their pose is one of absolute intimacy – interdependent and physically entwined. In this way, as well as in the mere act of presenting a freestanding figurative bronze sculpture in a contemporary art context, Muñoz intentionally identifies his work with a thick vein of art history. We are certainly led to think of the precedent of Gian Lorenzo Bernini, the greatest sculptor of the Baroque, whose Aeneas and Anchises sculpture caused a paradigm shift in works depicting figures carrying or supporting each other. Meanwhile, in two-dimensional terms, the exactitude of the pose and relativity between figures in the present work recalls a wider tradition of Renaissance figure studies. Raphael’s Young Man Carrying an Old Man on his Back shows a similar relationship of unsteady mutual dependence and would be a worthy comparative example to the present work. Throughout Muñoz’s oeuvre, and especially in the present work, art historical archetypes are appropriated and mutated to serve the contemporary post-modern moment.

The best of Muñoz’s works appear isolated within their own space; their actions, gestures, and facial expressions eternally frozen in dissonant poignancy. This quality abounds in Piggyback (2 Chinese Laughing). Indeed, Muñoz spoke of its importance only a couple of years after the work’s execution: “Some of the best figurative sculptures seem to be aware of the impossibility of looking alive and aware of the boundaries they can occupy. The most successful ones are the ones that state those limits, the space between being just a sculpture and the man walking down the street. Not for a split second can you confuse one with the other” (Juan Muñoz cited in: Exh. Cat., Washington D.C., Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Juan Muñoz, 2001-02, p. 42).