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Narcisos secos [Dry Narcissi]

Primary (Popayán, Colombia, 1951–)
NationalityColombian, South America
Date1994–95
MediumCarbon powder on paper
DimensionsDimensions variable; Each framed panel: 13 3/4 x 13 3/4 in. (34.9 x 34.9 cm); Grid Dimension: 45 1/4 x 45 1/4 in. (114.9 x 114.9 cm); Straight line dimension: 13 3/4 x 123 3/4 in. (34.9 x 314.3 cm)
Credit LineBlanton Museum of Art, The University of Texas at Austin, The 1996 Friends of the Archer M. Huntington Art Gallery Purchase, 1996.155.a-i
Collection AreaPrints and Drawings
Object number1996.155.a-i
On View
Not on view
Label Text

We are delighted to share a chronological framework that seeks to contextualize Oscar Muñoz’s work in relation to key artistic, cultural, and historical events that have taken place in Cali (where he resides) and in Colombia at large since the late 1940s.

 

View Oscar Muñoz: Chronology

 

Ver Oscar Muñoz: Cronología

The nine images in "Narcisos" derive from a small photograph on Oscar Muñoz’s identification card. Muñoz placed identical silkscreens bearing this image into shallow Plexiglas boxes, each lined with paper collaged from various sources, and then filled the boxes with water and carbon powder. As the water evaporated and the papers dried, the carbon powder settled through the silkscreens, imprinting images uniquely transformed by chance. This process negates the immediacy of photography and removes the artist’s hand from drawing or printmaking, even as the work bridges these mediums. Created during the violent Colombian conflict of the mid-1990s, "Narcisos" evokes the fragility and ephemerality of life and tests the limits of graphic representation.
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