Juan Munoz: Double Bind at Tate Modern

Born in Madrid in 1953, Juan Muñoz is internationally renowned for sculptural installations in which he situates the human figure within elaborate or complex architectural settings. This book documents an installation devised specifically for Tate Modern's Turbine Hall. Muñoz creates spaces using elements such as patterned floors, balconies, and furniture. By a highly considered placement of figures, the artist entices the viewer into an engagement with the implied dramas unraveling within. Muñoz's cast of characters includes dwarfs, ventriloquist's dummies, ballerinas, and circus performers. His work makes reference to earlier art, such as the paintings of Velasquez and classical sculpture, as well as to the films of Luis Buñuel. An introduction by Susan May to the work of Juan Muñoz is followed by an anthology of texts and images that have informed Muñoz's thinking in the evolution of the Turbine Hall project. These are in the form of photographs and drawings by the artist, facsimiles of newspaper clippings, magazine articles, and passages from novels--a sketchbook of ideas that convey the process of making art.