91青青草

KENNESAW, Ga. | Sep 6, 2022

Colombian artist is known for using ephemeral materials to explore how violence can affect society鈥檚 memories

Kennesaw State University鈥檚 Zuckerman Museum of Art (ZMA), a unit of the School of Art and Design, will present Recollections, Oscar Mu帽oz, now through December 10. The exhibit features six ground-breaking works by innovative Colombian artist Oscar Mu帽oz. 

The works comprising the show defy fixation and the belief that photography is definitive and absolute. Thus, the works question memory, erasure, permanence, and the resolute. The exhibition is curated by , director of curatorial affairs at ZMA, and , curator of Latin American Art at the Blanton Museum of Art, University of Texas at Austin. 

Davidson says, 鈥淢u帽oz鈥檚 works exist between forgetting and remembering. In other words, there is a constant battle between a thing that materializes and then fades away, falls apart. Although the images that he creates often change or disappear, they stay transfixed in our minds.鈥� 

Colombia has suffered a series of civil wars since the 19th century. Associating the precariousness of life with the fragility of the image, Mu帽oz often creates poetic reflections on the brevity of both. Many of his works revolve around this relationship between image and life, while others feature explicit images of the dead. Nonetheless, in his artistic practice, his approach to violence as a dire reality in Colombia is more philosophical than political. 

He explains, 鈥淣o doubt, the fact of having lived and grown up in Cali, Colombia鈥攁 country with numerous, complex, and thorny conflicts鈥攃ontributes to a certain outlook, a drive, maybe, a need to explore this to some extent in one鈥檚 work. The development of this reality, of these experiences鈥攖aking them to a poetic level, to a universal level, and to a level that has to do with artistic language鈥攊s more or less what I have explored in my work.鈥� 

The featured works were first shown in Invisibilia at the Phoenix Art Museum and then at the . Although Mu帽oz鈥檚 radical artistic practice combines photographic processes with drawing, painting, printmaking, installation, and video, the artist does not consider himself a photographer. He is best known for his evocative use of ephemeral materials to question the stability of the photographic image, poetically equating its intrinsic fragility with the fallibility of memory and the precariousness of life itself.

Davidson will present a virtual lecture on Recollections, Oscar Mu帽oz on Thursday, Sept. 8, at 7 p.m. The lecture is free with registration. The exhibition is open now through Dec. 10; admission is free. 

--Kathie Beckett