Mauricio Muñoz
A thirst for misery
November 13 - December 18, 2021
BEST PRACTICE is very excited to announce the opening of A thirst for misery, an exhibition of paintings by Mexico City-based artist Mauricio Muñoz. Through this new body of work, the artist finds in the early 2000s media portrayal of celebrity misery the roots of today's pleasure for disaster, an obsession fueling contemporary digital voyeurism and self-righteous social media patrolling.
So vain it had to be on a canvas. So superficial, just like the bidimensionality of a painting. So banal, and therefore a sudden urgency to make a lot of them. Stars having a melt down, just like acrylic paint melting into a gooey plaster. A theater of cruelty molded by the tabloids and sensationalist blogs we´ve been reading since our teen days. A thirst for misery: the climax of a series of unfortunate events that we´ve been eager to consume and enjoy.
Mauricio Muñoz (b. 1993, Tijuana) explores elements of pop culture to analyze the power dynamics, often racist and classist, within queer communities. Their artwork primarily takes the form of performance, video, painting and immersive installations. They have had solo exhibitions at the Centro Cultural Tijuana and Biquini Wax EPS, and their work has been included in group shows at kurimanzutto; the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego; and the San Diego Art Institute.
In 2018 they received a BA in Communication Studies from the Universidad Autónoma de Baja California. They are the co-director of Deslave, an artist-run space based in Tijuana, where they have worked on curatorial projects for PEANA (Monterrey), Human Resources (Los Angeles), Material Art Fair (Mexico City), Swab Art Fair (Barcelona) and SEVENTH Gallery (Melbourne). In 2019, Muñoz was named as the Mexican emerging visual artist of the year by La Tempestad magazine.
