Juan Muñoz’s figurative sculpture, often interlaced with sound and architectural elements, rendered him one of Spain’s most internationally renowned artists until his sudden death in 2001 aged 48. His work, included in many Biennales including Sydney’s, became a signpost of the return to figuration in contemporary sculpture. This retrospective, conceived by London’s Tate Modern in cooperation with Bilbao’s Guggenheim, brings together several of Muñoz’s signature large-scale installations (collectively known as ‘conversation pieces’), as well as earlier wall pieces and works on paper. The spatial idiosyncrasies of Frank Gehry’s building—odd angles, irregular recesses, unexpected long-range vistas—complement Muñoz’s oeuvre perfectly, given the artist’s interest in springing surprise and creating optical illusions of scale and perspective. (Particularly striking is the installation of Hanging Figure (1997), whose arched body suddenly looms above, suspended from the highest reaches of the ceiling through several floors.) Gehry’s ‘soft’ organic architecture, with its many references to natural cycles of change also helps accent the humanism, the deep concern for the human subject grappling with the nature of existence, that underpins Muñoz’s practice.
Beginning with small architectural interventions—like the scale-defying balconies perched on the gallery wall (such as Hotel Declercq, 1986) or a banister set at arm’s height concealing a knife that would slice any hand that used it as support (First Banister, 1987)—Muñoz eventually developed his most distinctive motif, a slightly smaller than adult-sized figure, clothed in a crumpled suit and rendered with rough textures in a single neutral shade. Either alone or in a group, on the floor or on the wall, this figure became the cipher for the artist’s exploration of the relationship between self and other, representation and reality, and the viewer