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Shotgun-Review.com review of "Effigues and Demagogues" - by Arvin Flores
Miju is a collaboration between San Francisco Bay Area based artists Michele Muennig and Juan Carlos Quintana. Working together since 2006, the artists see the act of collaboration as a spontaneous process. They rely on chance, and maintain complete liberty to add or subtract at will. Each artist’s personal style dissolves and morphs into a third entity creating what the artists call "an idiosyncratic parody teetering on a thin line between the absurdly real and the arbitrarily absurd".
The works in Effigies and Demagogues are embedded with twisted ironies. Effigies are used as a reference point to shed light on the bombastic rhetoric that flows through demagogues. Images are imbued with a comic tragedy, such as a monument to the 21st century being pulled off of a cliff, or an unfortunate soul falling down an icy hole, while an effigy chorus sings a German Lament, representing the demise of mankind. Miju creates paintings that are both simultaneously uneasy and beautiful. A full color catalogue will accompany the exhibition and will be for sale at the gallery.
Miju has exhibited through out the San Francisco Bay Area. Their first exposure was through a group show, Pistolitas De Azucar, Cultura, Pop, And Whimsy, at Galeria De La Raza in 2007. They were exhibited with much success at the Red Dot art fairs in Miami and New York through the Jack Fischer Gallery. Their recent show, Gristle Pays Homage to the Benevolent Sausage, is in collaboration with Manuel Ocampo, which also opened in August 2008 at the Mag:net Gallery in Quezon City, Philippines.