Juan Muñoz

Acquired from the artist by the present owner in 1999.

A unique configuration of Juan Muñoz's provocative figurative sculptures, the present work possesses a powerful theatrical polarity. These figures seem utterly absorbed in an intimate confrontation which appears both threatening and convivial in equal measure. Their personal identities are undermined by their matched appearances and the anonymity which shrouds much of Munoz's figural work is here increased by the intense nature that their discourse assumes through their facial proximity and the swaggering, mannered poses of the figures. Furthermore, the figures appear to mirror each other in a display of formal greeting laced with mockery. Characteristically ambiguous, Muñoz's staged encounter implicitly calls for the projected imagination of the spectator to resolve and enrich the narrative.  Throughout Muñoz's career, the viewer has been included in the very conception of the artist's sculptural space, becoming an integral element in the work's ability to suffuse its environment with an intangible yet heavy air of anxiety. Discussing the artist’s work James Lingwood has written: ‘Whispering, talking, prompting. Monologues, dialogues and conversations. In the muted world of Muñoz’s art, we hear not one of these many sounds’ (J. Lingwood, Juan Muñoz, monologues & dialogues (exhibition catalogue), Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, 1996, p. 17). The unspoken is wholly voluble in Dos Figuras con mano en el Pecho, the language of gesture and orchestration is more vital and compelling than conversation or declamation.