Narcisos by Oscar Muñoz
According to the myth, Narcissus became so enamored with his own reflection on the water that he ended up drowning, in his desperate attempt to seize the unstable image. Narcisos makes part of a large series that Oscar Muñoz began in the early nineties, reflecting, among other things, on identity, history, and the stability of the image over time. After preparing a silk-screen frame with his self-portrait, Muñoz delicately sifts graphite powder onto shallow containers filled with water so as to produce an image that floats on the surface in unstable equilibrium. As the water evaporates, the powder gradually settles and, responding to the changes in the environment, becomes distorted. Gone down the drain is a common expression for what is irredeemably lost. This video takes the temporal component of his previous works a step further, as we are able to experience the disappearance of the image in real time.