Translations:Oscar Muñoz/8/en

Drawing is a cross-cutting element in the visual work of Oscar Muñoz. After opting to focus on urban landscapes in the 1970s, he has explored drawing using a variety of materials and formats: light and shade, outlines and contrasts, and the function of dividing and structuring what is observed that is involved in the practice. Beyond its technical definition, Muñoz highlights the relevance of drawing as an activity of thought. Vital to these reflections has been the essay “The Craftsman” by the American sociologist Richard Sennett. From the outset, Muñoz’s work has been recognized for its sensitivity to historical and social phenomena in Colombia. In the numerous international exhibitions devoted to his career, he has been highlighted for his approach to themes such as memory, forgetting, and appearance and disappearance in photographic images. Following his youthful interest in the living conditions of tenement houses in Cali, in his more recent work he makes use of archive images that bring into the present public and anonymous scenes and figures from the social and political violence in the country. The indefinable position of his images in the instant before and after fixing was the reason for his technique being defined using the expression “protograph”. In an interview for his retrospective exhibition in Bogotá in 2011, he revealed details of his subjective and environmental experience that enable a clear interpretation of some of the most significant traits of his work. The monochrome nature of the majority of his works and the predominance of black and white are related to his color blindness. Moreover, the climate of Cali and the city’s moist, warm haze, known as “calina” or “calima”, leads to blurry and distorted sight: “A long time ago, I said somewhere that there’s a time of day in Cali when people seem to crumble apart”.