Solo exhibition at Best Practice, San Diego
November 13 — December 13, 2021
Through this new body of work, Mauricio Muñoz traces the origins of our contemporary fascination with disaster back to the early 2000s media spectacle surrounding celebrity downfall. Drawing from tabloids, paparazzi imagery, and the culture of public exposure, the artist examines the pleasure and curiosity embedded in moments of failure, scandal, and collapse. An obsession that has since evolved into the endless cycles of digital voyeurism and online judgment.
So devoted to their own image, they could only exist on canvas. So bound to appearances, like the very nature of a painted surface. So fleeting and familiar, and therefore impossible not to reproduce. The paintings become a theater of cruelty shaped by the images we have consumed since adolescence: a world where fame, humiliation, and desire are endlessly intertwined. A Thirst for Misery reflects on our collective appetite for downfall, the irresistible attraction toward watching others fall apart.