Antonio
Muniz
Media:
Painting, Drawing
Studio Location:
Artist Studios at 43-01 22nd Street
Room/Studio#
318
Website:
Artist Bio:
I was born and raised in Chihuahua, México, where I quickly realized that life’s rigid boundaries didn’t align with my natural instincts. At nine, I painted my first picture, a simple room with four walls in my mother’s house, marking the beginning of my journey toward creative freedom.
In 1996, I earned a BA from San Diego’s New School of Architecture. Studying architecture taught me to understand and shape space with a sense of structure and form, while also encouraging organic, free-flowing creativity. Yet painting became my true outlet, a practice I pursued as a self-taught painter, allowing me to fully break free from formal constraints and expand my vision beyond walls, exploring space, movement, and emotion in ways architecture could only hint at.
In 2006, I met Rodrigo Pimentel, a Mexican post-war and contemporary painter who became my mentor. Our ritualistic conversations and shared vision unlocked my imagination. Pimentel taught me that a line isn’t just a line, t can be a matrix of organic forms, opening the door to abstraction, automatism, and subconscious expression.
I draw inspiration from artists such as Roberto Matta, Remedios Varo, Dorothea Tanning, and Albert Oehlen. Matta’s biomorphic forms, Varo’s mystical landscapes, Tanning’s dreamlike figurations, and Oehlen’s abstract rigor have all shaped my creative approach.
Discovering the Surrealists’ technique of fumage was a turning point. Smoke’s unpredictable dance on the canvas mirrors the freedom I seek in my work. Fumage forms the skeletal structure of my paintings, while the ritual of burning sheds outdated habits and linear thinking, fostering flexible, reflective expression.
Building on fumage, I layer movement and color to create multidimensional landscapes. Each layer introduces new perspectives, forming abstract terrains that become portals, spaces where past, present, and future converge.
Through Surrealist techniques, I use color, movement, and space to reveal what lies beyond the physical world. Each painting acts like a portal, inviting viewers to step into unseen landscapes shaped by emotion, memory, and transformation
Artist Statement:
My work uses fire and smoke as material forces of transformation. I burn, erase, and expose the surface to create images that carry tension between destruction and survival. The marks are not symbolic — they are physical records of pressure, resistance, and release.
I create from the body. Gesture, movement, and instinct guide the process, responding to the unpredictable behavior of flame and residue. Sacred geometry informs the work as a structural force, creating a dialogue between control and surrender, precision and instinct.
My paintings explore power, vulnerability, and the complexity of reclaiming identity. They carry the marks of rupture and reconstruction — surfaces forever changed, bearing the evidence of transformation.
At its core, my practice maps a journey of self-discovery. Each piece captures a version of myself — evolving, releasing, revealing the inner landscapes forged through creation. The work is my witness: traces of survival, desire, and transformation rendered visible, unflinching and alive.
