Juan Muoz: Seven Rooms

Walking between these figures feels like an interruption; being a spectator is itself a performance. They seem to know more than we do, about the status of being an artwork and the place of the viewer. The joke, if there is one, is on us. The Guardian Muoz's revolutionary oeuvre creates emotional and evocative narratives through sculpture, installation, drawing, writing, and sound. Situating viewers between his work and amongst each other, he creates an intimacy between works of art and viewers. Muoz thought deeply about art history and in particular the tradition of Spanish painting. Before his untimely death at the age of forty-eight, he produced an extensive, powerfully evocative body of work that uniquely explores the narrative and philosophical possibilities of art. Published on the occasion of the two-floor exhibition at David Zwirner in New York in 2022, this catalogue provides an expansive overview of Muozs career from the 1980s onwards. In an accompanying text, art historian and curator Guillaume Kientz contextualizes Muozs influences within the art-historical canon. Acclaimed writer Siri Hustvedt writes a thoughtful response to the artists iconic Conversation Piece. In an imagined interview between Muoz and himself, Maurizio Cattelan further propels the artists artistic momentum and potential in the time before his death. Also featured is a never-before-published interview between Muoz and the art historian Michael Brenson that took place in 2000, less than one year prior to his untimely death.