A SOGA Y TIZÓN

Ramón Muñoz

An opening is nothing more than the liminal space between the open and the concrete, between the moulded and the undefined, between civilization and the ungoverned. A construction is nothing more than an impasse, a specific moment sometimes paralyzed until its own self-destruction, and at other times, a mysterious element that struggles between becoming a ruin or being part of progress. Ramón Muñoz’s work makes us participants in the most autobiographical aspect of painting, removed from our present to focus on his always, where elements of class and style converge in equal measure. Working from the light, that impassive force that reaches both the opening and the construction, making them a whole.

The explicit contradiction between the natural and the artificial in Ramón’s works makes this very distinction disappear, forming an indivisible whole. Ramón frames landscapes that capture everyday scenes from his closest surroundings, those that connected him to the human rather than the divine. The search for the icon vanishes, and, akin to Matta-Clark, he reveals the ideological stance inherent in his painting style: spaces are born to be inhabited, even if sometimes it’s necessary to empty them – or deconstruct them – to emphasise this fact.

The unadorned brick is nothing more than another sign of the immediacy of a phreatic painting in which the composition waterproofs everything the painter portrays, indifferent to his immediate surroundings, only to drain it back to its most synthetic form. Back to the language of the set square and the T-square.

Ramón takes us back to a silent urban ecosystem that only fades away due to the repetitive strikes of a hammer, the footsteps on scaffolding, and the open-air sweat of a mechanical job, almost invisible, giving rise to what is visible. His painting allows us to glimpse that open sky, from which brick towers emerge, serving as both support and a stage for a cast of characters in a state of waiting. Like tools, they seek to carry out their work, are assigned a specific purpose, impassive and motionless, waiting to be activated by elements that are not discernible within the canvas itself.

These hieratic characters, once again, constructed with set square and T-square, almost form archaic sculptures, akin to Greek kouroi. Yet in this case, they are not athletes but anonymous individuals whose faces are unrecognisable, void of emotions. They don’t want to be there, but they must establish themselves as immutable beings. They are the foundations, the pillars, and the beams through which the composition flows.

In ‘By Rope or Ember,’ Ramón Muñoz undertakes an exercise of self-definition in which, through painting and installation, he creates an array of references to his work as an artist, traversing both his artistic influences and the routine of any individual, in constant connection with what surrounds him in day-to-day life.

Original text by Álvaro Conde.