ISABEL CROXATTO GALERÍA PRESENTS BLANCO UNIVERSAL, SOLO SHOW BY AWARD-WINNING ARTIST CAROLINA MUÑOZ
Isabel Croxatto Galería presents Blanco Universal [Universal White], solo show by Chilean award-winning artist Carolina Muñoz (Santiago, 1985). The exhibition, on view from 21 August through 2 October 2019, gathers a series of works in oil on canvas, wood, and paper, and features curatorial text by artist and academic César Gabler.
After a successful participation at Art Central Hong Kong with Isabel Croxatto Galería last March, Carolina Muñoz presents Blanco Universal, her new series of paintings in which she explores the concepts of “appearing and disappearing” inside the architecture of exhibition spaces –such as an art gallery or a museum– as scenery of a pictorial, performative and surrealistic language, something the artist began in her previous series Bosque Muerto [Dead Forest] in 2018.
'The idea of disappearing stems from my own dreams in which I saw myself disappear', Carolina Muñoz says. 'It was a strange sensation because I knew I was looked for and, as a spectator of these dreams, I was looking for myself, too. I like the mystery dreams evoke, where you can’t guess about death or rapture, but rather enter into the undetermined and illogical', she adds.
Inspired by the essays Inside the White Cube by Brian O’Doherty and The Poetics of Space by Gaston Bachelard, the artist takes snow as an element that makes the external disappear, confuses roads, drowns noises and covers colour from its 'universal whiteness' in an exhibition space which, at the same time, turns out to be immaculate and almost sacred: the 'white cube'.
Ms Muñoz’s paintings propose an exhibition within an exhibition in which the artist not only paints, but also appropriates different languages, such as sculpture, installation, and performance through her characters, who transit between starring and spectator roles.
About the artist’s oeuvre, César Gabler comments in his curatorial text: 'Isidore Ducasse (the Comte of Lautréamont in almost every circumstance) gave us one of the most often cited remarks in art history: "beautiful as the chance meeting on a dissecting-table of a sewing-machine and an umbrella". Carolina Muñoz’s paintings could correspond to this definition that was so dear to past and present surrealists. Perhaps, it would only be necessary a change in the meeting place. Lautréamont’s table, with its evident allusion to necrophilia, would leave the morgue for a more luminous place, but maybe just as sinister: the art gallery'.
'As she has already shown in her latest works, this young artist has a particular interest in the artistic world and its exhibition spaces, as if there, in the midst of white in all its variations, she could find the best possible scenario for her cultured pop theatre: the chance meeting of Jan Van Eyck and John Krickfalusi in an art gallery', Gabler says.
Human clumsiness is another important factor in Blanco Universal, in which the characters’ body postures and facial expressions are in a constant confusion state, trying to disappear into the snow and all the variations of white within the universe created by the artist, where all the pieces that compose the exhibition –both in real life and in the fiction of her work– take place.
'When I met Carolina Muñoz’s work, I was captivated by the skills of this young artist and the peculiarity of her proposal', gallerist Isabel Croxatto says. 'There’s a strangeness in her work we cannot classify. The complexity of the pictorial languages Carolina uses to create layers and collages on the absurd show a virtuosity that, with a brilliant subtleness, raises questions about certain behaviours and scenarios in the present of contemporary art', Ms Croxatto adds.
Blanco Universal, first solo show by Carolina Muñoz at Isabel Croxatto Galería, gathers 16 large, medium and small format artworks, including pieces in oil on canvas as well as wood and paper. The exhibition is her second individual show after Fugas. Imaginación no es Fantasía [Fugue. Imagination is not Fantasy], presented at Centro Cultural de Las Condes (Santiago) in 2016.
In parallel, Ms Muñoz has taken part in different group shows and art fairs in Chile. Her work has been recognised with the Second Prize at the MAVI/Minera Escondida Young Contemporary Art Award in 2018 after being a finalist six times; and the Second Prize at the Artespacio BBVA Young Artists Award in 2017.
BLANCO UNIVERSAL | CAROLINA MUÑOZ
Curatorial Text | César Gabler
21August | 2 October
ISABEL CROXATTO GALERÍA
Napoleón 3242 | Las Condes
Santiago 7550141 Chile
+56 9 9434 0011
isabelcroxattogaleria.cl
For further press information, please contact Nicolás De Sarmiento | comunicaciones@isabelcroxattogaleria.cl
