Conversations with Rafa Munarriz (Tudela, 1990) culminate in almost philosophical colloquiums in which one reconsiders various ways of not only being, but of existing, of being in a certain space. It seems that the artist had the attempt to originate some space-form theory and I would have chosen art to spread it, like a proclamation. Munárriz holds the viewer in front of his works as if they were going to give him some kind of metaphysical response.
The young creator aspires for the individual to generate questions in order to rearrange reality, giving it a meaning other than the established one, and the way he has to exercise this personal reasoning is through what sculptural. These sculptures are created from the stimulation that the environment projects on the artist. Munárriz’s works arise from a questioning of this space of his that is the urban. That is, from the conception of the artificial environment.
In the case of Munárriz, his interest in urban planning precedes his own devotion to art. «When he was little he painted graffiti. It wasn’t the aesthetics of the graffiti that interested me, but the fact that I was alone in the city. Walking alone creates a different spatial conception of your environment. I would sneak out at dawn and sit on bridges that crossed highways in order to watch cars that weren’t watching me. On the roads, everything is built around these machines, and you are not aware of how aggressive or how big they are until you situate yourself as a citizen on them”, declares the Navarrese. Munárriz’s art is inspired, in part, by introversion and claustrophobia. This justifies the artist’s predilection for expressing the lonely condition of the individual in front of the city and the repudiation of its construction and the privatization of its spaces. “I am overwhelmed by the fact that a third party is building my environment, my space, which is why I often propose a response to those limitations through sculpture,” he affirms.
The Navarrese confesses that he was not born an artist, at least not consciously. He was never captivated by art nor did he have a special interest in delving into this manifestation of human activity. It was art that chose Munárriz and not the other way around. He assures that In Spain there is no relationship between current contemporary art and the Fine Arts degree, and that it was his stays in Germany, Chicago and Brazil that gave him the opportunity to delve into this artistic movement. Especially Germany, whose concomitant loneliness fostered what is now his art jargon. What enriched the artist was the cultural contrast, the way of relating to each other. «When I travel to another city, tourism is secondary. What I like is to sit in a place and see how people act towards each other”, declares the Navarrese.
the art of thinking
Munárriz stated that it took time for him to call himself an artist: «You cannot want to be an artist. I don’t know any artist who wanted to be. He is gradual. The word artist contains a certain taboo, since There are people who conceive of the artist as a superior being. It’s just another occupation. I began to consider myself that way when I realized that I had something to say, and that something had a reception».
The sculptor attaches great importance to the art of thinking. It is reading, questioning what inspires him to create. After the idea he shows the realization of sketches. And again think. Think through the development of these models. «It is in the head where work appears for the first time. My creation process could be divided into three parts. The last one is a mix between thought and production », he says.
The man from Tudel also exposes the importance of space in his creations due to its condition as an installation, and he mentions his work ‘M506’: a section of a highway guardrail that suffers an accident. In this piece, Munárriz stated how the individual, by getting out of order, can generate violence: «For me it was very interesting to observe how the action of the error of the accident generated that break in the law. Understanding the accident as a liberation was what attracted me. I let off steam in the development process. A subject had collided with something that denied him access and this had generated an expressive form. The accident as an act of involuntary claim». Something similar happens with business closures. Munárriz is captivated by the way in which the private defines the conception of the public, the fact that a large metal curtain dictates to the individual when he can and when he cannot access that space. «Through denials of spaces, which determine how you have to inhabit the city, ideas are formalized. My work questions those other ways of inhabiting it».
With metal, the highest conception of straightness, Munárriz tries to find organic forms through its molding in industrial presses. «The break with this material brings another questioning. How something dogmatic, directional and planned can be both plastic and flexible. is the nature within the city. The individual, as something organic, based on rectitude.
Munárriz’s studio has no doors. It is a refuge without limits that lies in the denials of Madrid. And his talks in this culminate in a downpour of questions that only dawn can answer.