Oscar Muñoz

OSCAR MUÑOZ  (1951, Colombia/Lives in Colombia)

“How can one construe a notion of time in this immemorial setting? How can one assimilate and articulate in one’s memory all these events that have been happening for so many years now?”

Born in Popayán, Colombia, Oscar Muñoz studied art at the Escuela de Bellas Artes in Cali in the 1970s. As an art student, he began making drawings based on photographic images, and although his studies did not specifically include photography or audiovisual media, these media and their relationships to reality and meaning-making have subsequently become central to his artistic practice.

Muñoz is also known for his use of ephemeral materials in poetic reflections upon memory and mortality. For example, Aliento (1995-2002) consists of a series of seemingly blank mirrors. However, when the viewer comes close to them and breathes on them, subtle obituary portraits emerge momentarily on the surface. Muñoz’s video Re/trato (2004) shows the artist painting a self-portrait with water. As the water makes contact with the hot pavement Muñoz is painting on, the portrait vanishes. Muñoz often bridges the media of film, video, photography, installation, and sculpture.

In the 1980s and 1990s, Colombia was wracked with a war between feuding drug cartels and the Colombian government. Muñoz’s installation, Ambulatorio consists of a large aerial photograph of that city printed on a sheet of shattered security glass. Viewers walk on top of the glass floor, looking down upon the city. The work was inspired by a bombing; walking through Cali after the bomb exploded, Muñoz was fascinated by the prevalence of fragments of glass encrusted into the pavement. The work has subsequently been re-made in Belfast and in Monterrey. “My work today,” Muñoz writes, “is based on my endeavor to understand the mechanism developed by a society which has ultimately suffered the routinization of war… A past, a present and in all likelihood a future full of violent events on a daily basis, which are stubbornly repeated, in a practically identical fashion.”

2022
Intentos / Attempts, Sicardi | Ayers | Bacino, Houston, TX, USA    
Oscar Muñoz: Invisibilia, The Blanton Museum of Art, Austin, TX, USA

2021
Oscar Muñoz: Invisibilia, Phoenix Museum of Art, Phoenix, AZ, USA

2018
Oscar Muñoz. Hasselblad Award 2018. Gothenburg Museum of Art, Gothenburg, Sweden

2017
Oscar Muñoz: A Traves Del Cristral, Mor Charpentier, Paris, France
Oscar Muñoz: des/materializaciones. Fundación Sorigue, Lleida, Spain
Oscar Muñoz, Antología - Museo Rayo - Museo de dibujo y grabado latinoamericano, Roldanillo

2016
Oscar Muñoz: El Coleccionista (The Collector), Sicardi Gallery, Houston, TX, USA

2015
Oscar Muñoz: Sedimentaciones, University of South Florida Contemporary Art Museum, Institute for Research in Art, College of the Arts, Tampa, FL, USA
Oscar Muñoz: Atramentos, Tabacalera, Promoción del Arte, ARCO Madrid 2015, Madrid, Spain

2014
Oscar Muñoz: Biografías, University of New Mexico Art Museum, Albuquerque, NM, USA; Fundação Joaquim Nabuco, Recife, Brazil
Oscar Muñoz: Protographies, Jeu de Paume, Paris, France
Oscar Muñoz: Protografías, Banco de la República, Bogotá, Colombia
Oscar Muñoz: Sedimentaciones, University of South Florida Contemporary Art Museum, Tampa, FL, USA
Oscar Muñoz: Protographies, Jeu de Paume, Paris, France
Oscar Muñoz, Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Monterrey (MARCO), Monterrey, Mexico
Oscar Muñoz: Sedimentaciones, University of South Florida Contemporary Art Museum, Tampa, FL, USA
Portrait(self)portrait, Prince Claus Fund Gallery, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

2013
Oscar Muñoz: Protografías, Museo de Arte Moderno La Tertulia, Cali, Colombia; Museo de Arte de Lima (MALI), Lima, Peru
Oscar Muñoz: Eclipse, Casa Daros, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Oscar Muñoz: Re/trato, High Line Art, New York, NY, USA

2012
Oscar Muñoz, Sicardi Gallery, Houston, TX, USA
Oscar Muñoz: Protografías, Museo de Antioquia, Medellín, Colombia; Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires (MALBA), Buenos Aires, Argentina
Oscar Muñoz: Imprints for a Fleeting Memorial, The Visual Arts Center of Richmond, Richmond, VA, USA
Oscar Muñoz: Ambulatorio Belfast, Golden Thread Gallery, Belfast, UK

2011
Oscar Muñoz: Protografías, Museo de Arte del Banco de la República, Bogotá, Colombia; Biblioteca Luis Ángel Arango, Bogotá, Colombia
Oscar Muñoz: Imprints for a Fleeting Memorial, Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art (SECCA), Winston-Salem, NC, USA
Oscar Muñoz: Biografías (Biographies), The Mandes & Arts Festival, Johan Deumens Gallery, Haarlem, The Netherlands; Cornerhouse, Manchester, UK
Oscar Muñoz: Impresiones débiles, La Fábrica, Madrid, Spain

2010
Oscar Muñoz: Videoworks 2005-2008, Stiftelsen 3,14, Bergen, Norway
Oscar Muñoz: Volverse aire, PhotoEspaña 2010 / PHE10, Círculo de Bellas Artes, Sala Goya, Madrid, Spain
Oscar Muñoz: Anarchive, mor.charpentier, Paris, France

2009
Oscar Muñoz: Mirror Image, Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts, Perth, Australia
The Disappeared, University of Wyoming Art Museum, Laramie, WY, USA
Crónicas de la ausencia, Oscar Muñoz y Rosângelo Rennó, Museo Tamayo, Mexico City, Mexico
Oscar Muñoz: Biografías, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia
Oscar Muñoz, Bildmuseet, Umeå, Sweden
Oscar Muñoz: Imprints For a Fleeting Memorial, La Galerie de I’UQAM, Montreal, Canada
Oscar Muñoz, OK Centrum für Gegenwartskunst, Linz, Austria

2008
Oscar Muñoz: Mirror Image, Institute of International Visual Arts, Rivington Place, London, UK
Oscar Muñoz: Imprints for a Fleeting Memorial, Prefix Institute of Contemporary Art, Toronto, Canada
Documentos de la Amnesia, Museo Extremeño e Iberoamericano de Arte Contemporáneo, Badajoz, Spain
Inmemorial, Korea Foundation, Seoul, South Korea

Akron Art Museum, Akron, OH, USA

Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia

Art Museum of the Americas, Washington, D.C., USA

Biblioteca Luis Ángel Arango, Bogotá, Colombia

Blanton Museum of Art, Austin, TX, USA

Centre Pompidou, Paris, France

Centro Cultural Cajastur, Caja de Asturias Gijón, Spain

Colección Arco, Madrid, Spain

Colección Cisneros, Caracas, Venezuela

Colección Sofia Imber, Caracas, Venezuela

Daros Latinamerica Collection, Zürich, Switzerland

Denver Art Museum, Denver, CO, USA

Fonds Régional d’Art Contemporain du Centre, Amiens, France

Fundación El Monte, Caja de Sevilla, Sevilla, Spain

Fundación JUMEX Arte Contemporáneo, México City, México

Fundación “La Caixa”, Barcelona, Spain

Fundación Sorigué, Lleida, Spain

Hasselblad Foundation Collection, Gothenburg, Sweden

Higashikawa Photo Festival Collection, Higashikawa town, Hokkaido, Japan

Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C., USA 

Los Angeles County Museum (LACMA), Los Angeles, CA, USA

Museo de Antioquia, Medellín, Colombia

Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y León, León, Spain

Museo de Arte Latinoamericano de Buenos Aires (MALBA), Buenos Aires, Argentina

Museo de Arte Moderno de Bogotá, Colombia

Museo de Arte Moderno de Medellín, Medellín, Colombia