Solo exhibition at Llano, Mexico City
August 19 — September 30, 2023
Mauricio Muñoz's (Tijuana, 1993) practice has been shaped by an exploration of his lived experiences through a visual language rooted in references to popular culture. His work has centered on paintings of celebrities during moments of public embarrassment, as well as the abstraction of communication codes found in dating applications. In Dinner Party from Hell, the artist presents a new body of work inspired by his recent interest in two forms of popular entertainment: the reality television series The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills (2010–present) and camp-inflected alien films such as Mars Attacks! (1996). The collision of these seemingly unrelated worlds has allowed Muñoz to develop new visual and narrative possibilities within an alternative fictional universe.
The works in the exhibition take as their point of departure the show's iconic and recurring arguments, most notably the infamous "Amsterdam Dinner Party from Hell" episode (Season 5 of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills), which later achieved a second life online through memes. The paintings depict a speculative television program featuring extraterrestrial life, adopting the visual grammar of reality television by emulating camera angles that capture each protagonist's reactions during moments of conflict.
At first glance, the worlds brought together by the artist appear incompatible. Yet their encounter reveals the creative potential of expanding narratives across disparate contexts. In Muñoz's practice, this process emerges from a position of dissidence and from a desire to reconfigure the meanings of cultural material that once brought him pleasure or accompanied his process of self-definition. He is no longer merely a spectator, but a producer of the stories that matter to him, appropriating them to construct forms of enjoyment on his own terms rather than accepting those offered by others.
This series of paintings is situated within the current moment marked by renewed speculation about the existence of extraterrestrial life and the resurgence of reality television as a dominant form of mass entertainment. In a speculative mode, these works may offer a glimpse of what future television could look like. Whereas science fiction films typically imagine first contact as either dystopian, dramatic, or comedic, Muñoz suggests that such an encounter might just as easily unfold through spectacle, glamour, and drama.
Text by Diego Olmos