Mauricio Muñoz’s work (Tijuana, 1993) has been characterized by glimpsing his life experiences through a visual language that draws on references from popular culture, employing a painterly approach centered around celebrities during their embarrassing moments and the abstraction of communication codes in dating apps.
In Dinner Party from Hell, the artist presents a body of work stemming from his recent interest in two entertainment products: the reality show Real Housewives of Beverly Hills (2010 – Present) and campy alien movies like Mars Attacks (1996) This collision has allowed the artist to discover new visual and narrative elements within this alternate uni- verse.
The artworks in the exhibition take as their starting point the iconic and recurring arguments from the show — frivolously staged in episodes like Amsterdam Dinner from Hell (Season 5, Real Housewives of Beverly Hills) — which later become viralized on the Internet through memes. The paintings depict a speculative television program representing extraterrestrial life, emulating camera angles that capture the diverse reactions of each new protagonist during moments of conflict.
The combination of the artist’s selected worlds may seem disparate and unrelated at first, but by connecting them, they demonstrate a creative potential for expanding narratives across different contexts. In Muñoz’s production, this potential is born from dissent and a desire to reconfigure the relative content of what once brought him pleasure or accompanied him in his process of self-definition. He is no longer just a spectator, but now a producer of the stories that interest him, appropriating them to construct his own enjoyment, not that which someone else bestows upon him.
This series of paintings is situated within the context of the alleged existence of extraterrestrial life and the resurgence of reality shows as the primary mass entertainment product. In a speculative manner, these paintings perhaps serve as an augury of what we might witness on future television. While science fiction movies present us with dystopian, dramatic, or comedic depictions of possible third-kind encounters, Muñoz suggests that we should not rule out the possibility that such encounters could also be filled with spectacle, glamour, and drama.
Text: Diego Olmos
