Vik Muniz (Brazilian-American, born 1961) is distinguished as one of the most innovative and creative artists of our time. Endlessly playful and inventive in his approach, Muniz harnesses a remarkable virtuosity in creating his renowned photographic illusions.

Working with a dizzying array of unconventional materials—including sugar, tomato sauce, diamonds, magazine clippings, chocolate syrup, dust, and junk—Muniz painstakingly builds tableaux before recording them with his camera. From a distance, the subject of each resulting photograph is discernible; up close, the work reveals a complex and surprising matrix through which it was assembled. That revelatory moment when one thing transforms into another is of deep interest to the artist.

Muniz’s work often quotes iconic images from popular culture and art history, drawing on our sense of collective memory while defying easy classification and mischievously engaging a viewer’s process of perception. His more recent work incorporates electron microscopes and manipulates microorganisms to explore issues of scale while unveiling both the familiar and the strange in spaces that are typically inaccessible to the human eye.

This major mid-career retrospective canvasses more than twenty-five years of Muniz’s work to transform the ordinary into the extraordinary, reminding us of the power of art to surprise, delight, and transform our perceptions of the world.

Xippas Gallery
Rue des Sablons 6 & Rue des Bains 61, 1205, Geneva, Switzerland


Xippas Geneva is pleased to present Handmade, a solo exhibition by the Brazilian artist Vik Muniz.

The “handmade” works, as the title of the exhibition suggests, are the result of a hybrid process combining manual, or artisanal treatment – namely painting or collage – and high-resolution digital photography. The results are complex compositions, combining different techniques, making each work unique. Paper and cardboard are painted, cut out and superimposed on a surface, before being photographed in order to allow for manipulation, rearranging and further photographing, and so on. By creating different planes which reveal underlying elements and their photographs, Vik Muniz invents real trompe-l’œil where the objects and their photographic representations are interlinked in a visual game.

Inviting the spectator on a quest to distinguish between the object and its image, the artist pursues his research on the mechanisms of perception, a common thread throughout his work. Unlike the previous series, where images from the history of art or from collective memory were interpreted with unusual, but also daily, materials, Handmade attests to the recourse to artistic materials such as paper, cardboard or metal. Hence, this series refers to the fundamental principles of abstract art: color, form, and rhythm are used as the main components of the composition.

The works in this series, akin to geometric abstraction or Cubist paintings, play on volume and movement, transcending the two dimensions of the photographic image both symbolically and literally, in order to reconnect with its materiality. The artist, therefore, experiments with photographic media to create compositions in three dimensions, where the layers of paint, shapes cut out in the metal, and the shadows duplicate each other and overlap, merging with their images. Like bas-reliefs, these volume works contain a simulation, hovering between “truth” and illusion, between reality and its double.

The material trace of the artistic gesture which is therefore present in each piece alludes to the creation process without revealing it. On the contrary, it becomes increasingly mysterious as the eye loses itself, compelled to travel over the different planes of the image.

The construction of the image thereby invites the viewer to deconstruct it by the gaze. In this new series, Vik Muniz explores the nature of perception, playing on the dichotomy between the object and its representation, and reinventing the possibilities of the construction of the photographic image. The increasingly porous border between the object and its copy reveals the mechanism behind our ways of seeing and understanding the image. In the digital age, where images increasingly take the place of objects and their manipulation becomes an integral part of daily life, reproducibility becomes one of the legitimate principles of creation. As the artist says, “there is now hardly any difference between a piece of work and its image”. In his new series, he develops a reflection on the fleeting concept of material reality and its possible interpretations. The aim of the illusion created by Vik Muniz is therefore not simply to destabilize our perception, but to “reveal the architecture of our concept of truth”- 1

1 – Vik Muniz, Natura Pictrix. Interviews and Essays on Photography, Edgewise, New York – Paris – Turin, 2003, p. 47


Visit Xippas Gallery website here.

Xippas Gallery is pleased to present Handmade, Vik Muniz’s new solo exhibition. In this new series, Vik Muniz explores the nature of perception, playing on the dichotomy between the object and its representation, and reinventing the possibilities of the construction of the photographic image.

The “handmade” works, as the title of the exhibition suggests, are the result of a hybrid process combining manual, or artisanal treatment – namely painting or collage – and high-resolution digital photography. The results are complex compositions, each unique pieces, combining different techniques: paper and cardboard are painted, cut out and superimposed on a surface, before being photographed in order to allow for manipulation, rearranging and further photographing, and so on.

By creating different planes which reveal underlying elements and their photographs, Vik Muniz invents real trompe-l’œil where the objects and their photographic representations are interlinked in a visual game.

The works in this series, akin to geometric abstraction or Cubist paintings, play on volume and movement, transcending the two dimensions of the photographic image both symbolically and literally, in order to reconnect with its materiality. The artist, therefore, experiments with photographic media and uses the technique of printing on aluminum to create compositions in three dimensions, where the layers of paint, shapes cut out in the metal, and the shadows duplicate each other and overlap, merging with their images. Like bas-reliefs, these volume works contain a simulation, hovering between “truth” and illusion, between reality and its double.

The increasingly porous border between the object and its copy reveals the mechanism behind our ways of seeing and understanding the image. In the digital age, where images increasingly take the place of objects and their manipulation becomes an integral part of daily life, reproducibility becomes one of the legitimate principles of creation. As the artist says, “there is now hardly any difference between a piece of work and its image”. In his new series, he develops a reflection on the fleeting concept of material reality and its possible interpretations. The aim of the illusion created by Vik Muniz is therefore not simply to destabilize our perception, but to “reveal the architecture of our concept of truth”.

Galerie Xippas Paris
108 Rue Vieille du Temple,
75003 Paris,
France

Vik Muniz: Photography and the Rebirth of Wonder

Vik Muniz: Photography and the Rebirth of Wonder examines the full breadth of the imaginative artist’s career and features more than 100 photographs, including many of Muniz’s most recent works.


One of the most innovative artists working today, Muniz uses unconventional materials and photographic images that play with our process of perception. The São Paulo, Brazil native creates sculptural works from unusual materials like chocolate syrup, tomato sauce, magazine clippings, diamonds, and trash, which he then records with his camera. He calls the resulting images “photographic delusions” because they often resemble well-known images from the history of art and popular culture.


Frequently playing with scale, he has made enormous land drawings that he photographs from the air. More recently, he has created microscopic works using microorganisms and single grains of sand. In every instance, he makes the familiar seem wondrous, highlighting the extraordinary power of vision, perspective, and imagination.


This exhibition has been co-organized by the Foundation for the Exhibition of Photography, Minneapolis/New York/Paris/Lausanne, and the High Museum of Art, Atlanta. The exhibition catalog will be available for purchase in the Museum Shop.

Chrysler Museum of Art
1 Memorial Pl
Norfolk, VA
23510


Visit the Chrysler Museum’s website here.

Vik Muniz’s Mappa del Mondo, after Alighiero Boetti (Pictures of Pigment), 2009. Courtesy of Olnick Spanu Collection, New York.

Guest Lecture: Vik Muniz
May 6, 2018 4pm

Magazzino Italian Art is pleased to announce a presentation and Q&A by internationally acclaimed Brazilian artist Vik Muniz on Sunday, May 6th, 2018 at 4 p.m. A cocktail reception with the artist will follow with a tasting of Sardinian cheeses and Italian wines.

Vik Muniz (b. 1961) will share insights into his art practice, from the beginning of his career to his most recent works, in context with Magazzino Italian Art’s current exhibition Arte Povera: From the Olnick Spanu Collection. On this occasion, the artist’s Mappa del Mondo, after Alighiero Boetti (Pictures of Pigment), 2009, part of the Olnick Spanu Collection, will be on display alongside Boetti’s Mappa, 1983. Muniz’s work will remain on view at Magazzino until Monday, June 4th, 2018.


Vik Muniz’s Mappa del Mondo, after Alighiero Boetti (Pictures of Pigment), is a chromogenic print mounted on aluminum, while Boetti’s Mappa is an embroidery handwoven by native women in Kabul, Afghanistan. In this discourse, Muniz gives the viewer the opportunity to see Boetti’s image in a different format, still aesthetically pleasing, however offering a commentary on the process of creating art itself. Muniz conceives his version by using various colorful pigments; he then photographs the work prior to destroying it, and the photograph becomes the final work.


In the book Fotografia Maledetta e Non (ed. Feltrinelli), 2015, Germano Celant states: Muniz seeks an interlocutory phase, that of a photographic image that exists for itself; a complete form that thrives from its materials’ energy and their informal articulations, which belong to the universe of the unintelligible daily life.


This event is by reservation only. RSVP here.

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info@magazzino.art


2700 Route 9,
Cold Spring, NY 10516

Pictures by Claus Bach.