Juan Muñoz to create next work for Unilever Series at Tate Modern

The inaugural works in The Unilever Series have been phenomenally successful. Tate estimates that over 150 000 people climbed Louise Bourgeois' three towers, I do, I undo and I redo, and three million visitors to the gallery were greeted by her giant spider straddling the bridge over the Turbine Hall. Unilever’s support, totalling £1.25 million, allows Tate Modern to commission a new large-scale work for the Turbine Hall each year until 2004.

For The Unilever Series, Muñoz is devising an installation playfully utilising the colossal dimensions of the Turbine Hall and exploring the shift in scale between the building and the audience. Unilever chairman Niall FitzGerald comments: ' The Unilever Series provides an opportunity for creativity on a grand scale and we are delighted that Juan Munoz is taking up the challenge for 2001. We are intrigued to see how he will use the Turbine Hall to continue his exploration of the relationship between people and their surroundings. I am sure that the result will be both stimulating and involving.'

Juan Muñoz creates architectural settings using elements such as patterned floors, staircases and balconies. Then, by a highly considered placement of human figures, Muñoz entices the viewer into an engagement with the implied dramas unravelling within. The architectural features also serve as metaphors, particularly the balcony which, in Muñoz’s art, operates as a form of threshold, between performer and spectator, past and future, and subject and object.

Muñoz’s cast of characters includes dwarfs, ventriloquist’s dummies, ballerinas and circus performers, and makes reference to earlier art, such as the paintings of Velasquez and classical sculpture, as well as to the films of Luis Buñuel. Muñoz regards himself as a storyteller, and indeed the uncanny quality of the figures, their enigmatic muteness, invites the viewer to construct their own narrative or reading of the work. Muñoz’s sculptures are made with virtuoso craftsmanship, often in traditional materials, such as bronze, yet they undeniably belong to the contemporary moment.

Juan Muñoz was born in 1953 in Madrid, where he continues to live and work. He studied at Central School of Art in London and the Pratt Centre in New York. He is one of a generation of European artists to have emerged over the last twenty years whose work has significantly extended the language of sculpture. His work has been included in numerous solo and group exhibitions, including A Place Called Abroad, Dia Centre for the Arts, New York (1996), Venice Biennale (1997), Doubletake, Hayward Gallery, London (1993), Documenta 9, Kassel (1992) and Possible Worlds, ICA, London (1990). A major touring retrospective of his work will open in Washington DC in October 2001.

For further information about Unilever or The Unilever Series, please contact:
Gwyneth Shore - UK Public Relations Manager: Telephone 020 7822 6628; fax 020 7822 6532