Anton Munar’s My father through my grandfather’s eyes contemplates the changing nature of one’s sense of self in the context of growth, bringing with it an equal shift in our closest personal relationships and perspectives. Hosted by Galeria Wschód, the exhibition incorporates Munar’s own painting alongside the use of his grandfather’s family photos to explore the nature of time, collapsing three generations in on one another, providing the opportunity for the sharing of experience in a perpetual instant.
Munar’s paintings have a distinctly modernist feeling, with certain works like Antes que tú sombra caiga / Before your shadow falls and Despertarse un día más / To wake up another day cast nods to the palette and texture of later modernism, giving them a timeless quality which is occasionally interrupted by a playfulness in the rendering of figures or objects – specifically the illustrative quality of the figure in Embarazo / Pregnancy.
Subtle choices like the quality of line or placement of a subject set the paintings apart from genre-worship and plant them – even if not firmly – in the present.
In some cases the paintings appear worked on, in the sense that they very well could have come close to being abandoned were it not for an impulsive daub of lemon yellow or arching swath of black, feeling conversational and resolute, like a heated argument dropped immediately under the warmth of friendship.
Compositionally heavier works pile up on each other, unable to find stability in brevity, they open the door to all possibility and dissuade coherent narrative. The more minimal pieces bring with them the reminder that, although painting may encompass all things, ultimately the painter works alone – it is rarely their decision by which impulse they will be defined.
The photographs themselves are accomplished, artistic interpretations of family life and an ode to the glowing nature of fatherhood. Images like Som du er ? / As you are ? show an undeniable compositional intelligence, the kind of picture that if stumbled across in the family album would arrest the viewer both for the playful nature of the subject matter and the sophistication of the flat grey table cutting the image in two. Other pictures, like Som du er ? / As you are ?, bring that sense of familial documentation to the forefront, situating the context of the exhibition clearly within the realm of this familial relationship.
This is a solo exhibition for Munar, containing photographs by his grandfather which are in turn listed as being produced by both of them. Like the subtle change in the quality of line or the keen compositional eye which confidently slashes the image, this gesture intones a playful question the viewer gesturing to the depth of the exhibition’s interrogation.
Munar’s accompanying text describes his own impending fatherhood, along with – I paraphrase – the awareness that very soon he will be seeing his own father for the last time as only a son.
This transition, from son to father, is the key motif of the presentation. To grapple with the unexpected shifting not only of one’s oldest and dearest relationship but also of the entire sense of self – whether over nine months or in an instant – is something almost impossible to communicate succinctly.
Although perhaps inconsequential, I'm drawn back to the titling of the photographs. Listed as a collaborative artwork, made decades before Munar’s birth, it’s interesting to consider the intention here.
Arguably, this is where the most abstract aspect of the exhibition lies. The images made by Møller are presented as artworks in their own right within the gallery but Munar’s name alongside them speaks to the intention activated by them. In essence, Munar is using these family photos to deconstruct the linear nature of the family tree, he is creating an instance in which timelines are flattened and the three generations come together in equal standing, anticipating the arrival of the fourth.
To become a collaborator in the childhood photographs of your own father is to collapse history into an instant, a way of illustrating the feeling that one is about to inhabit another body simultaneously – like a door being unlocked. Infantalising the father as a subject, rearranging the lineage, walking in someone else’s shoes.
My father through my grandfather’s eyes takes place on the metaphorical back porch of your grandparents home. The entire exhibition happens in the momentary awareness of this instant as one under which we share the same sky, but only for so long. It contemplates aging, time and the impalpable nature of familial relationships without ever wandering into melancholia – although it hangs around the edges.
Munar manages to gesture towards this ungraspable complexity, utilising love and respect as materials as much as paint and canvas as a means of contemplating the unstoppable march of time and the changes it brings in us all.
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Anton Munar (b. 1997, Copenhagen) lives and works between Copenhagen and Mallorca. He is a graduate of the Slade School of Fine Art in London (2017) and The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen (2023). His works were previously exhibited across Amsterdam, Seoul, Los Angeles, New York, Copenhagen, London, Kyoto, and Thirsk, amongst others.
Allan Gardner (b. 1992, Glasgow) is an artist and writer based in London. His writing has been published by outlets such as; Kaleidoscope, Mousse, Dazed, Sleek, Editorial, émergent, The Quietus and many more.
