Many Times (1999) is one of Muñoz’s most celebrated creations: A gallery crowded with figures, all cast in matte gray resin, all basically identical—a laughing Asian man, eyes pressed closed, head bald (the image is derived from a Belgian portrait bust). Each figure wears an identical jumpsuit, but is frozen in a different, slightly stiff posture.
Muñoz ran away from the drabness of Franco’s Spain at 17, trained to be an artist in London, and spent time in Stockholm and New York before moving back to Madrid, where he developed his career. As you might expect from someone with this background, he was an adventurous misfit: In the 1980s, he was into figurative sculpture when it was still considered recherché. At the same time, from his studies, he definitely had absorbed the expanded possibilities of contemporary installation (his final work was an ambitious environment for the Tate’s immense Turbine Hall, finished days before his death at 48).