Óscar Muñoz

The artistic practice of Colombian Oscar Muñoz encompasses photography, installation, sculpture, and video to poetically address themes related to memory and loss. Muñoz makes use of ephemeral materials and actions, imbued with a phantasmal quality, such as drawing with water on a sun-exposed stone slab portraits of effigies taken from the obituary section of a newspaper, or apparently black mirrors that come to life when the spectator approaches them and their breath momentarily brings forth portraits of the deceased. Muñoz's work evokes the fleeting nature of the image, its transfiguration, and the passage of time. Muñoz's work in the "Ante la imagen" (2009) collection investigates the power of a photograph to survive memory. It is a mirror on whose surface Muñoz has engraved an image taken from a daguerreotype made in 1839 by Robert Cornelius. That image is the first photographic self-portrait in history (evidence that the "selfie" is far from being a modern invention), and as we approach the work, the spectator is also reflected in the mirror. The constantly changing image is a metaphor for life.