July 6, 2020
(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. Juan Muñoz: Six Rooms 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.”
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Image: Juan Muñoz, Conversation Piece, Dublin, 1994. Installation view at the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, 1994. Photo by Kristien Daem. Courtesy Juan Muñoz Estate