Bilbao -- the Guggenheim, Juan Muñoz

Juan Muñoz "13 Laughing at Each Other"

You have probably seen photos of Muñoz's 100 little gray-colored oriental men, each identical and arranged in groups, but in person it is an evocative, bewildering experience. Standing around in a grand room, these "beings" appear to be laughing, each with his own expression created solely by the tilt of a head, the gesture of the body, and I wanted to join in the conversations, imagining them without effort. But, intentionally, their size (about 3/4 human) and the formality created by their uniformity, prevents this. We can be nothing but observers, and in the observation we observe our own response, our own emotions to the situation.

This is Muñoz's brilliance. He challenges at every turn with the fact that there is no reply from his creations. He considers this a form of theatre. They stand or sit alone, allowing us to witness, to be provoked. Questions of safety and vulnerability, consciousness and self-knowledge are raised in each installation.

In a darkened diorama-like stage, at the far end some 20 feet away from the observer, two small clay figures sit on a bench. A recorded conversation of two voices, reminiscent of "Waiting for Godot," plays in a loop:
What did you say?
I didn't say anything.
You never say anything.
But you keep coming back to it.
What did you say?
I didn't say anything.
You never say anything.
But you keep coming back to it.

Muñoz was born in Madrid in 1953 and died on Ibiza in 2001. I know nothing of his life beyond the scope of his work well-represented in this major show. By manipulating scale and perspective, time and space, he intentionally sought to "contaminated" the encounter between observing and observed, excluded but drawn in.

It was good that I went first to Bellas Artes because the Guggenheim answered my questions about how late-20th century art is provoking thought and conversation... through experiential art. The building is not only a fantastic space, a monument to the ingenious and innovative use of materials (e.g., the glass is infused with atomic-sized particles which provide transparent protection from the sun; the titanium covering is the thickness of a tissue), but the work of Serra and Muñoz raise questions of perspective, the experience of time and space, the ways we interact with ourselves and our environment. It's mind-bending.