Occurrences and things in motion, which have a beginning, but no clear shape and no end – these are Oscar Muñoz' themes. In Re/trato it is the futile attempt to fix a portrait on stone with water. An eternal repetition of the same movement that never reaches its goal. Muñoz emphasizes the frustrating moment in the repetition, which seems like a playful variation of the "Myth of Sisyphus". To be precise, though, it is not always the same thing that is repeated. The face that is brushed on again and again is, according to the artist, continuously "reconstructed from memory" and thus differs from the previous one.
Muñoz, who has explored photography both theoretically and artistically again and again, thus indicates the impossibility of unequivocally capturing and fixing the counterpart, the other, the 'world'. "Re/trato" is a play on words with the meanings "portray" and "view again".
51st Venice Biennale, 2005

Oscar Munoz, born 1951 in Popayàn, Columbia, lives and works in Kali.