Translations:Oscar Muñoz/6/en

The career of Oscar Muñoz began in the 1970s with series of drawings, which incorporated photography without a conceptual interest in the medium and followed the currents of realism and hyperrealism that were dominant at the time. His work was close to that of other artists such as Ever Astudillo, Fernell Franco, Edgar Negret, Phanor Satizábal, María de la Paz Jaramillo and Pedro Alcántara Herrán, with the latter two being very close peers in the Experimental Graphic Workshop. The influence of the previous generation of artists also persisted at that time, including Bartelsman, Lucy Tejada and María Thereza Negreiros. A range of works by Muñoz from this decade are part of the collections of Colombia’s foremost art museums. During the 1980s, the art scene was witness to a saturation of drawing and graphic art that resulted in events and collective projects related to the mediums coming to an end. For many artists, this signified a return to periods of introspective and relatively isolated work. For Muñoz, this period was characterized by a transition from the dark images of the 1970s to other, more luminous art. His experimentation with the Cortinas de baño (Shower curtains) dates from this decade, and the piece marks a shift in his use of materials and mediums. From the 1990s, Muñoz delved deeper into experimentation with new methodologies based on his initial experience with drawing, printmaking and photography, which he now blended with video, sculpture and installation. The challenges posed by the works he created from then on entailed technical support for the sound, visual and photographic handling. He continued to use materials over the medium of water, as in Narciso (Narcissus), and incorporated steam as an image developer, as can be seen in Aliento (Breath). Some of these works entered the collections of London’s Tate Modern Gallery, the New York Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), the Los Angeles County Art Museum (LACMA) and the Daros Latinamerica Collection in Zurich. In 2005, Muñoz set out to be a cultural manager with the creation of Lugar a Dudas, a space to promote the visual arts in Cali based on a residency program for young artists.