Although many of Juan Muñoz’s sculptures initially seem playful, they also have a darker side. In reproduction the figures made of fibreglass look as if their skin has been burned, scarred or melted. In reality they are remarkably similar to calcified objects from a limestone cave, stalagmites that have been polished by the hands of countless visitors. The figures often seem to be in suspended animation, as if suddenly immobilised – like Medusa’s victims or the inhabitants of Pompeii – but fully conscious. Sometimes the eyes are propped open with matchsticks. I recall standing in front of Las Meninas with Muñoz in the Prado in 1991. He spoke of the terror of Spanish painting and, rightly or wrongly, it was the terror of fixation or entrapment implied by representation itself that I took him to be referring to.

In his sculptures, with their eyes pinned open, there is no respite from either the world or consciousness. The figures are like the desperate insomniac in a joke I recently heard: ‘He had tried everything. Finally he blasted his head off with a shot gun ... but he still couldn't sleep.’