(New York, London, Paris & Hong Kong—July 9, 2020) David Zwirner is pleased to announce its exclusive worldwide representation of the Estate of Juan Muñoz. The Estate comes to the gallery on the recommendation of Marian Goodman. Marian Goodman Gallery has represented Muñoz’s work since 1990 and has mounted six shows in New York between 1991 and 2015. David Zwirner is looking forward to continuing to promote and further the legacy of Juan Muñoz. The gallery is planning a solo exhibition of Muñoz’s work for New York in the spring of 2021, curated by Vicente Todolí. 

 will be on view at the gallery’s Chelsea spaces and will include six major installations by the artist, from 1986 to 2001, that exemplify the formal and perceptual breadth of his sculptural works.

Juan Muñoz was among the most significant artists to rise to international prominence in the mid-1980s and 1990s. In his formally inventive works, which range from isolated architectural elements that suggest a human presence to evocative large-scale installations comprising figures arranged in groups, Muñoz sought to foreground the relationship between the art object, architectural space, and the viewer. Until his untimely death in 2001, at the age of forty-eight, he produced an extensive body of work that include not only sculptures and installations but also drawings, writings, sound works, and curatorial projects that uniquely explore the narrative and philosophical possibilities of art.

As curator Neal Benezra describes, “While Muñoz is committed to resolving the form and content of a particular object, a parallel interest centers on its conceptual and emotional underpinning.… [Muñoz opens] his work to a panoramic range of references and borrow[s] freely from the history of art as well as from architecture, literature, music, and theater. Ultimately he does so not to clarify or resolve his position, but rather to complicate and enrich a body of work dominated by silence and absence and their psychological implications.” In the artist’s own words: “Sculpture is space by negation. When placed in the right space, it takes over the powers that already existed there and joins them.”

David Zwirner will be the Estate of Juan Muñoz’s exclusive commercial gallery. In this role, David Zwirner will promote the legacy of the artist through curated exhibitions at its New York, London, Paris, and Hong Kong gallery spaces, and through the development of new scholarship on the artist’s work through publications and international exhibitions.

As stated by David Zwirner, “We are honored to begin working with the Estate of Juan Muñoz, an artist whom I knew for many years. I have greatly admired his profoundly engaging work since my earliest days as a gallerist in the 1990s, when he was at the vanguard of an international group of sculptors that was reinventing the medium. His work remains as relevant today as it was then. His Estate comes to us from Marian Goodman, who presented a number of extraordinary shows of his work during his lifetime and for many years after. I want to thank Marian profoundly for suggesting that we could be a beneficial partner. Our work with the Estate will begin with a large-scale presentation of Muñoz’s work at our New York gallery next spring, curated by Vicente Todolí, one of the foremost experts on the artist’s work.”

, 1994. Installation view at the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, 1994. Photo by Kristien Daem. Courtesy Juan Muñoz Estate

Photograph of Juan Muñoz by Ben Johnson, dated 2001.

David Zwirner to represent the Estate of Juan Muñoz

Image With Caption

Video

Media

A holiday photo by Cynthia Zarin of a canal in Venice.

Cynthia Zarin

Dialogues: The David Zwirner Podcast

To Venice and Rome

Diana Thater and Rachel Rose

A detail from Marcel Dzama's coloring book, titled Coloring the Moon Pink, dated 2020.

Coloring the Moon Pink

News

Marcel Dzama: Coloring the Moon Pink

, a collection of eight intimate letters written to a teenage Balthus between 1920 and 1926.

Read Jarrett Earnest's interviews with Holland Cotter, Darby English, and Siri Hustvedt, published in 

What It Means to Write About Art, Interviews with Art Critics

, a catalogue of photographs by Roy DeCarava, and watch a video introducing the artist's life and work.

, the most comprehensive collection of the artist’s writings assembled to date.

Everything She Touched: The Life of Ruth Asawa

, published this year by Chronicle Books.

Read excerpts from “Serene’’ and “Roma’’, chapters in the forthcoming book 

, and listen to a podcast with the author.

Joan Mitchell: I carry my landscapes around with me.

Read James Baldwin's introduction to the exhibition catalogue for 

 by Emma Enderby, an essay in the publication accompanying Oscar Murillo's major exhibition at Haus der Kunst in 2017.

, c. 1525 (detail). The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York


A detail from a painting by Lorenzo Lotto, titled Venus and Cupid, dated c. 1525.

“Live for a while in these books.’’

Excerpts from David Zwirner Books

 project organized by Wolfgang Tillmans’s foundation Between Bridges, 

 is an initiative to help members of the nightlife community who are threatened by the current public health and economic crisis.

Thirty-six international artists—including gallery artists Njideka Akunyili Crosby, Marlene Dumas, William Eggleston, Isa Genzken, Jeff Koons, Raymond Pettibon, Wolfgang Tillmans, and Luc Tuymans—have each designed a poster each as a reward for donations. All proceeds will be distributed equally among a select group of New York City nightlife beneficiaries. From there, each nightlife collective will distribute their portions to real people within their networks who have been hit hard by this pandemic. As the campaign states, “Djs, hosts, fashionistas, visual artists, and more are connected to these collectives. This effort is a way to get money into the hands of real people with NYC nightlife who keep NYC alive.’’

A detail from a photograph by Wolfgang Tillmans, titled Resolute Rave, dated 2015.

Support Nightlife NYC

An Initiative from Wolfgang Tillmans’s foundation Between Bridges

(New York, London, Paris, Hong Kong—July 16, 2020) David Zwirner is pleased to announce the global representation of the Romanian-born, New York–based artist 

. Over the past decade, Ursuţa has gained recognition for her inventive sculptural work that mines the darker undercurrents of contemporary society. Drawing from memory, nostalgia, art history, and popular culture and employing a variety of media, the artist merges traditional sculptural processes and new technologies to transform commonplace objects and materials into viscerally evocative sculptures and installations that give new, redemptive forms to subjective experience.

As Ali Subotnick has written, “Memory, death, the human condition, and the absurdity and irony of life are all inspirations for the artist. Her work is ripe with emotion and contradictions—pathos and humor, melancholy and hope, raw and refined, hard and soft, aggressive and tender. It’s at times vulgar and political, poignant and wry, exotic and familiar.”

A solo exhibition of Ursuţa’s work is scheduled for spring 2021 at David Zwirner’s Paris location.

David Zwirner states, “I was struck by Andra Ursuţa’s powerful presentation in last year’s Venice Biennale, which stayed with me. Later that fall I was encouraged by artists of the gallery to see Andra’s show at Ramiken. I went to Bushwick, and I can’t say it any other way: I was blown away. Thanks to Mike [Egan, of Ramiken] who invited me spontaneously to visit Andra in her studio right there and then. Not only is she a true artist’s artist, but her visionary work resonates in many ways and pushes the boundaries of sculpture into new and salient formal and narrative territories. We’re excited that Andra has joined the gallery and we’re looking forward to our first show together, which is scheduled for the spring of 2021 at our Paris gallery at 108, rue Vieille du Temple.”




Image: Andra Ursuţa, 2020. Photo by Jason Schmidt

A photo of Andra Ursuţa in 2020. Photo by Jason Schmidt.

Artists in the News

David Zwirner Now Represents Andra Ursuţa

David Zwirner is an art gallery with locations in New York, Los Angeles, London, Paris and Hong Kong. We present physical and online exhibitions, podcasts, books, and more.