ANDREW MUNOZ | A WALK IN THE PARK

About

Munoz grew up in the greybelt, surrounded by the meticulously planned but ugly concrete buildings, housing estates of uniform design punctuated by convenient but soulless patches of greenery. He describes this as an over-simplified environment ... much like the over-simplified places in picture books. For this body of work, Munoz has returned to these slightly sinister parks, play areas and towpaths, areas in the urban environment offering a glimpse of open space where the imagination is allowed to wander briefly. A receptacle of collective consciousness, these spaces exist not only in reality but also hold an important place in the realm of the imaginary. Munoz uses these settings for recreating and reinterpreting narratives. The sources of these narratives are varied, as is our shared experience of the world. They may come from a newspaper clipping, from a familiar story or be drawn from found photographs. By bringing together these diverse elements, Munoz examines our shared cultural history. He portrays primal characters and spaces, which evoke the social narrative traditionally reflected in religion or myth. His work frames the dialogue between the natural and supernatural, the real and the imagined, and between the environment and the figures within it. The paintings find a place between reality and fiction. Haunting and evocative, the works are compellingly uncanny in their juxtaposition of the familiar and unfamiliar. They tap into collective thoughts and shared concerns, and yet remain intensely personal. Munoz creates a delicate balance between figurative and abstract elements, the comic and the grotesque, adult perception and childhood memory, and between the personal and the collective. Throughout the process, he allows the materials of paint and canvas to develop the imagery and ideas.