Oscar Munoz Exhibits at CU Art Museum

Posted: 12:00 AM, Thu, Sep 14 2006

By DUSTIN HUTH For the Colorado Daily
Thursday, September 14, 2006 9:12 PM MDT

As much as we'd like to hold on to them forever; to keep them inside of our brains like bugs in jars with holes in the lids so they can breathe, the fact of the matter is that memories fade.

This bittersweet truth is the foundation for the work of Columbian artist, Oscar Munoz, who has contributed several pieces to CU Art Museum's exhibition, titled "Vestige/Vestiggio." The exhibit, curated by the museum's Director, Lisa Tamiris Becker, also features works by two other important Latin-American artists, Laura Anderson Barbata, and Betsabee Romero, each of whom address the phenomenon of memory in their own way.

Some would argue that trying to draw with water on dry, hot cement is not very smart...it's just going to evaporate. But despite this issue of practicality, Munoz does exactly that...over and over and over, in his work, "Re/Trato." In this video installation, the artist is shown continuously trying to draw a self-portrait in the little used mediums of water and sun-scorched cement, but by the time one section is complete, the previous section has been erased through evaporation.

"Like the myth of Sisyphus, it is an absurd work, and unfinishable," says Munoz about the piece. According to the artist, it is similarly impossible to maintain a perfect memory.

Another piece that attempts to convey this concept is called "Narciso." Unfortunately, this piece is not a part of the current exhibition, but understanding it does help to create context for pieces that are. This work was created by taking a clear Plexiglas container full of water, and brushing finely powdered charcoal onto its surface through a stencil of a man's face. When the stencil was removed, the image of the face floated on the surface of the water. This was repeated using several containers of water, and the same stencil. As time went on, the images became less and less clear.

"Any event can alter the image irreversibly," explained, Munoz. "Someone can stick their finger in. Or the wind blows. Or in New York, the subway passes underneath."

This sense of being in a constant state of destruction is another theme addressed in Munoz' art.

"While we are sometimes reminded of death and destruction and disappearance," explained Leslie Dodson, a current fellow in the CU art school, "[Munoz'] work also brings our attention to some of the elements of life, to the very delicate, the fragile, the ephemeral aspects of life."

As in "Re/Trato," the evaporation of water played an important role in the project. As time passed the water-level lowered steadily and the image became increasingly distorted. Then, when all the water was gone, the image was at the bottom of the container. Only then could the image be hung on the wall, when it was at its maximum distortion, and all of the volume that had once been full of water, had become full of emptiness.

"In general I think that my work is a metaphor of the difficulty to retain in the memory the images that pass," said Munoz, in summary.

"Vestige/Vestigio" is actually one half of a dual exhibition: the other half is titled "Waves on the Turquoise Lake: Contemporary Expressions of Tibetan Art," which was co-curated by Becker, and anthropological curator Tamar Victoria Scoggin from the Center for Contemporary Tibetan Art.

"It's really two separate exhibitions, but I thought it would be very special for the Tibetan artists, who have not had as much contact with the art world as these Latin American artists have, and who have also dealt with incredible political transformation and instability, etc. but in a completely other part of the world," said Becker.

Separate though they may be, it is fitting that "Vestige/Vestigio" shares its space with these works from Tibet and exiled Tibetan communities. Tibet is a once-isolated land whose former identity is currently in the process of fading into fragile memory due to the recently connected railway through the Himalayas.

"Both [exhibits] deal with the ephemeral nature of life, and the pervasiveness of suffering," said Becker, "that's apparent in both of the works, but from completely different points of view.