The piece shows four articulated figures in iron, slightly bent and joined two by two through a lower sculpture attached to a sort of wooden box (shaped as a tomb) from whence they seem to have come. Even if not yet showing the staging complexity and the rigour in the modelling of gestures and expressions showed by the figurative sculptures in bronze that Muñoz created after 1989 (date of the piece at hand), this work is a sort of model for those subsequent figurative sculptures as it already addresses a set of features that will be explored later. Although articulated, these flat sculptures suggest a motion, a motion that is only apparent for in fact they are static, as if immobilising a moment that is gone. Here, Muñoz plays with a relationship between action and immobility, tricking the viewers and challenging their perception of the work. As the artist says, "On the one hand there is the stillness of a figurative sculpture that for me remains an inexplicable enigma. On the other hand, the representation of movement and gesture within stillness is a challenge that is endlessly fascinating. And the idea of a sculpture that moves (…) can create a moment of wonder. It is precisely that ´moment of wonder´— the motion that the figures seem to want to initiate – that the viewer hopes to witness before this sculpture. However, as typical in the work of Muñoz, the viewer´s expectations are immediately frustrated by the awareness that, after all, the figures are immobile, as if frozen into gestural silence, their story having died on them”.

Production: Serralves Foundation — Museum of Contemporary Art, Porto