VikMuniz

At MIT, artist Vik Muniz has pursued his interests in image production and visual literacy, working with researchers in biology, optics and engineering. In collaboration with Marcelo Coelho, a PhD candidate in the Fluid Interfaces Group, and Rehmi Post, a Visiting Scientist at the Center for Bits and Atoms, Muniz developed a process to machine microscopic images onto millimeter-wide grains of sand. The images were later transformed into large, high-resolution prints. With Tal Danino, a Postdoctoral Associate in Dr. Sangeeta Bhatia’s lab at the Koch Institute for Integrated Cancer Research, Muniz used…

Vik Muniz repurposes everyday materials, such as chocolate, ash, dirt, peanut butter, and jelly, to create intricate and heavily layered trompe l’oeil renderings, often of iconic artworks. Muniz’s highly-constructed works are not only “legible” on various levels but also call attention to their own legibility, conveying an image without concealing the language — or rather, the linguistics — of the image conveyed. In 2008, he undertook a large-scale project in Brazil, photographing trash-pickers as figures from emblematic paintings, such as Jacques-Louis David’s Neoclassical Death of Marat, and then recreating the photographs in…

Wednesday March 30, 2016

By Vik Muniz 1991 When the industrial productive capacity ultrapassed society’s consume capacity the product became less important than its image. We live today in a world of images which we do not only consume but also we have started to communicate through the mechanisms that fabricate them. Any intention of subverting such situation can be perceived as a challenge though the ever shrinking space for creative thought is located precisely where we not only transgress but also dissect and expose some of the these mechanisms. There is a great cheese shop…

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By Roberta Smith September 15, 2011 Sikkema Jenkins & Company 530 West 22nd Street, Chelsea Through Oct. 15 The photographer Vik Muniz operates with impunity in the Bermuda Triangle bordered by commercial, popular and fine art, which can drive the art world a bit nuts. (He resembles David Hockney in this regard.) But he almost always puts on a good show in terms of sheer showmanship, and his current one is even better than usual. It reminds us that part of the razzledazzle of his art stems from physical texture, which almost…

By Vik Muniz C Photo, Issue #4: New Latin Look – Nueva Mirada Latina Ivory Press January 2012 In my mind, the visual history of Latin America starts with a photo of a shirt. A strange advertisement; the soiled, blood splattered, garment worn by the emperor Maximilian at the moment of his execution, eternalized by the camera of his court photographer, Francois Aubert, in June 19th, 1867. Although taken by a European artist, this stunning image has epitomized the iconographic spirit of a vast cultural territory even to our days. The image…

by Vik Muniz “Interesting Phenomena occur when two or more rhythmic patterns are combined, and these phenomena illustrate very aptly the enrichment of information that occurs when one description is combined with another” -Gregory Bateson I had been working on three very distinct bodies of work for over four years when the need to put together an exhibition of “recent works” forced me to think about what these series had in common. In one of these series I used pure loose pigment to reproduce the images of familiar paintings as Tibetan mandalas…

By Hilarie M. Sheets March 6, 2016 As a graduate student at the respected M.I.T. Media Lab, Marcelo Coelho collaborated with the artist Vik Muniz to help him achieve a poetic and technical feat that teases the imagination: drawing a picture of a castle on a single grain of sand. After two years of failed experiments with various lasers, they finally began getting images of beautiful complexity using an electron microscope with a focused ion beam to etch superfine lines—when it didn’t pulverize the grains altogether. The tiny etchings could then be…

Vik Muniz is celebrated for his joyful, quirky, dark, and occasionally mind-boggling work that riffs on popular photographic imagery, referencing social icons and cultural realities and juxtaposing these themes in fascinating ways. This book features an extraordinary selection of works that span Muniz’s entire career—more than 150 color illustrations display the enormous range of Muniz’s work and the disorienting and expansive logic of his world. International icon Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis is portrayed with diamonds with as much reverence as Brazilian landfill workers whose portraits are created from the trash they collect. The…

Class dismissed: Art, Creativity and Education Ivorypress 2015 by Vik Muniz First of all, I would like to thank all of you here. I have to confess I don’t go to artists’ talks very often, so sometimes it takes an enormous effort for me to give a lecture. I would also like to thank everybody involved in the Humanitas lecture series, especially Elena Foster who is here and is a generous supporter of the programme. I was a little bit hesitant to accept the invitation because speaking to an academic crowd always…

Sorry, this entry is only available in Português.

Sorry, this entry is only available in Português.

Text by Vik Muniz For Holt Quentel Exhibition at the Aspen Art Museum- Nov 15, 2013- January 19, 2014 Published in the catalogue accompanying the show. I first heard of Holt’s chairs in 1989 as we both attended a group show at the now defunct Meyers Bloom gallery in Los Angeles. After the press conference she asked me if I wanted to drive with her to Malibu to watch the pelicans. What about them? I asked. They can’t land right, she said. We spent an entire afternoon watching the comedic creatures crash…

  Vik Muniz: Catalog Raisonné 1987-2015 Everything So Far After the success of the first edition published in 2009, Capyvara Publishers in partnership with BNP Paribas Foundation, launched the new edition of Vik Muniz’ new works from 1987-2015. This bilingual (English / Portuguese) new edition includes all of the series done in the last six years in a luxury edition in two volumes inside one box. This important publication includes over 1400 works reproduced in over 1900 high quality images in color, giving the viewer the opportunity to closely examine the material used, which are so…

The Unbearable Likeness of Being by Vik Muniz Hokusai tried to paint without the use of his hands. It is said that one day, having unrolled his scroll in front of the shogun, he poured over it a pot of blue paint then, dipping the claws of a rooster in a pot of red paint, he made the bird run across the scroll and leave its tracks on it. Everyone present recognized in them the waters of the stream called Tatsouta carrying along maple leaves reddened by autumn.” (Henri Focillon, The Life…

by Vik Muniz In a dark corner of the church of Santa Cecilia in São Paulo lies the mesmerizing image of the child-saint Santa Donata. Her prostrate position combined with the uncanny anatomical veracity and naturalistic coloring with which she is rendered gives visitors the charged sensation of watching someone sleep. The priest of this parish once confided to my grandmother that every two or three years, they had to open the glass casket in which the image rests, to trim her hair and fingernails because they had not stopped growing since…

by Vik Muniz A Sunday afternoon in the Louvre — I could not pick a worse day to visit a museum. Wandering in, unable to decide what to see, I’m dragged by the thick flux of tourists to the Denon wing: The place where the Mona Lisa hangs. In the ample room, an endless line is formed by those who, for a second or two, will share a moment of partial intimacy with the famous painting. Nearly everyone in the room carries a camera. Some don’t even get to see the work…

by Vik Muniz Life itself is not the reality. We are the ones who put life into stones and pebbles. Frederick Sommer The Good Picture “Smile!” commanded the despotic man in the burgundy jacket. We obeyed immediately, only to be rewarded by the blinding light of a flash. At the age of four, I didn’t question why I should smile without being happy. Apparently, neither did my parents. Smiling for a camera seems to be imbedded in the genetic coding: even the blind do it. Looking at the impromptu portrait from Sears…

The end of the art-object articulated as an object coincides with the reign of objects of values. The individualized and individualizing object, when submitted to a process of patterned repetition in an endless series, is entirely dependent on factors which are of a technical and sensorial order, inscribed into the social, intellectual and material characteristics of a society. The object will always be a distinct element in the context of the real, and the regression of the object to thing acting as an indistinct condition reduces space to the notion of ambient….

Vik Muniz: The Weimar File Ivorypress, 2013 ISBN 9788494053580 Idea Code 13391 240 pages, illustrations in b&w, 11 x 15 cm, English/Spanish Vik Muniz Cac Malaga [Hardcover] Publication Date: November 14, 2012 The catalogue for a photography exhibition presented by the Contemporary Art Centre in Malaga featuring over 100 works of art by Brazilian artist Vik Muniz, this weighty volume documents the spectrum of materials the artist employs to create works that are both reproductions of famous artworks and stand-alone masterpieces. Optical illusions combine with reality in order to play surprising visual…

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY Abreu, Gilberto de. “Em Busca da Visibilidade”, Jornal do Brasil, Brazil. March 23, 2001. Adams, Parveen. “The Art of Repetition: Exploitation or Ethics?”, Art Monitor #3, p.82. 2008. Aguilar, Nelson. Brazilian Art in the 90’s. Rediscovery Exhibition: Contemporary Art Exhibition Catalogue, 2000. Albin, Michael, Ed. Collection in Context: Selected contemporary photographs of hands from the collection of Henry Mendelssohn Buhl. Thread Waxing Space. New York, NY. 1996. Allen, Kathleen. “Muniz’s Photos Blur Artistic Reality”. Vision, June 24, 1999. Allés, Chantal. “Crazy Art.” Vivays Publishing Ltd, Cambridge, UK, 2011. P146 Alleti,…

(c) National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne In an email interview with Maria Zagala on 22 January 2007, Vik Muniz expanded on his interest in Piranesi’s Imaginary prisons and his working method. MZ: Over the past decade you have made a number of series based on the art of past masters including Rubens, Rembrandt, Van Gogh, Monet, Redon, Matisse and, of course, Piranesi. You reconstruct their works by using radically different media such as chocolate, dust gathered from the Whitney’s offices and galleries, cuttings of reproductions of paintings by Van Gogh and Monet…

Published in the catalogue Seeing is Believing Arena Editions Verona, 1998 Charles Stainback: When did you start using photography? Let me rephrase that. When did you realize the power the photographic image could have in your work? Vik Muniz: Even though I have always been involved with photographic images, for a long time I was reluctant to make photographs myself. I guess I made a decision to stop producing images and concentrate on making real things right after I gave up a career in advertising. I became a sculptor so that I…

By Linda Benedict-Jones LBJ: This is the first Artist-in-Residence Program at the Frick Art: Historical Center. It was inspired by the program at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston. The Frick has asked you to wrap your creativity around something on their site, and it seems that you are most interested in Clayton, Henry Clay Frick’s historic home. The Frick is known for 19th-century work so the mere fact that they are doing a project with a 21st-century artist is really quite incredible. VM: It’s interesting that you mention I’m a…

Peter Galassi and Vik Muniz Peter Galassi: I think it might be useful for people to know a little bit about what you did before you started making the work for which you have become known. Vik Muniz: It would be easier to start listing things I didn’t do before turning to art. Even though I have drawn compulsively since I was a child, it never occurred to me to become an artist. When you are born in Brazil in a working class family, you think of things like being a doctor,…

Copyright 2001 Menil Foundation, Inc. Vik Muniz and Matthew Drutt Matthew Drutt: What did you imagine The Menil Collection to be like before you came here for the first time in August, and how did your impressions change afterward, if at all? Vik Muniz: This project has evolved from the particular situation of imagining something before it’s a reality in front of your eyes. I had seen The Menil Collection in tiny pictures in books and magazines, and I had seen the paintings in the collection in the same minute format. When…

This interview is published in the catalogue that accompanies Vik Muniz solo show at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Rome, Italy. September 2003 / January 2004 DE: The language of photography has assumed an important role in artistic pursuit in recent decades, from the more traditional level of documentation it has gradually asserted itself as a full bodied mechanism of expression, that’s to say it has demanded a direct protagonism without any necessary reference. Photography, sustained by radical technological innovation and a consequent freedom of expression, has effectively moved the centre of…

Interview in Bomb Magazine n.73, Fall 2000 Vik Muniz might be billed as a photographer, and photographs are generally the end product of his work. But in another age he might have been an alchemist, transforming base lead into refined gold. In Vik’s case, lead has been replaced by light. He is clearly a visual artist who tinkers equally with light and the mechanisms of perception that decipher the messages light conveys. He tricks the eye to reveal the tricks the eye itself can play and how that trickery has been used…

by Thomas Zummer “. . . mi ritrovai per una selva oscura . . . ” -Dante Alighieri, Inferno, Canto 1 At the very beginning, indeed within the first few lines, Dante’s narrator ‘finds himself’-mi ritrovai-in a ‘dark wood,’ in an allegory conventionally taken as ‘error’ or ‘sin,’ though it may also refer to that ‘ancient forest, deep dwelling of beasts’ near the mouth of Hades found in the Aeneid(1). It is also quite likely that there is reference to the Platonic idea of matter, silva in the Latin translation of the…

Abstract This article examines three  series of works by the artist  Vik Muniz— Pictures of Thread,  Piranesi Prisons and Pictures of  Wire. These works employ a string-like  material to convey pictorial  space. The “string” is utilized in  different ways: to create a type of  landscape tapestry, as a drawing  constructed through “string art”  techniques, and to make sculptural  drawings. The use of string  provides a three-dimensional  element to the work, yet this  apparent three-dimensionality jars  with the presentation of the work  as photographs of the original  drawings. This article proposes an  analysis…

by Demetrio Paparoni Let’s begin by saying that Vik Muniz considers art to be a tool for scientific knowledge. It might be said that for artists this is nothing new, that it has been like this since the fifteenth century, since the study of perspective married the work of art to mathematics and geometry. It is since then that, because landscape was a perspectival breakthrough, the viewer can look at the painting as though through a window. And from the fifteenth century onwards art has never stopped being a tool for scientific…

by Catherine Millet for Xippas Galleries “Erotica” Exhibition. October 27 – December 12, 2001. Inutile de le nier : lorsque l’on entre dans la salle d’exposition où sont accrochées les Ïuvres de la série Erotica (2001), aussi averti que l’on soit, on en prend plein la figure. Cibachromes et C-prints d’un mètre soixante à plus de deux mètres cinquante de côté présentent en gros plan des fesses, des seins ainsi que des verges pénétrant des vulves selon à peu près tous les angles de vue. On supporte le choc, d’abord, justement, à…

by Olivier Kaeppelin Translated from the French by Brian Holmes Can one bring a dead figure back to life? Is the essence of art not to transform inert things into living forms – long-lasting forms? In the face of an exaggerated taste for objects and their assemblages, for anecdotal, autarkic life-sequences, all quickly exhausted, yet composing an important part of today’s art, Vik Muniz proposes something quite different : a precise conceptual position that accords little worth to the seductions of reality. He takes an ironic stance toward “object-works,” illustrational shortcuts, to…

Equivalence as Critical Aporia in the Work of Vik Muniz Socrates: What are they then? Strepsiades: I don’t rightly know; spread fleeces, perhaps Socrates: I’ll put you a question. Strepsiades: Quick, let’s have it. Socrates: Have you never noticed a cloud resembling a centaur, a leopard, a wolf, a bull? Strepsiades: Of course, so what? Socrates: They turn into what they like. Aristophanes, Clouds, 423 B.C. I It is one thing to take photographs of clouds. Gustave Le Gray, Alfred Stieglitz and Edward Weston were among the many to do so. And,…

by James Elkins What is the most interesting thing that can be done with representation? The best way to begin answering that question, which is (or should be) of pressing interest to visual artists working in a variety of media, is to list some ideas that were once thought to be the most interesting things about representation: 1. It is no longer interesting that photography means “painting is dead” (Paul Delaroche’s opinion, although he kept painting). If painting is dead, it is so in a far more curious fashion than anything photography…

by Joshua Decter “The poetic or the ecstatic is that in every disclosure which can open itself up to the absolute loss of its sense, to the (non-) base of the sacred, of nonmeaning, of un-knowledge or of play to the swoon from which it is reawakened by throw of the dice.” Jacques Derrida, Writing and Difference “By subtle subversion I mean, on the contrary, what is not directly concerned with destruction evades the paradigm, and seeks some other term: a third term, which is not , however , a synthesizing term…

by Kirby Gookin Sometimes we see a cloud that’s dragonish; A vapour sometime like a bear or lion, A tower’d citadel, a pendent rock, A forked mountain, or blue promontory With trees upon’t, that nod unto the world, And mock our eyes with air. Shakespeare, “Antony and Cleopatra”, (IV, xii, 2-7) Vik Muniz is an illusionist. Better yet, Vik Muniz is a picture tease. Like the transmutations of a quick-change artist, what you see is not always what you get. However, Muniz’s sleight of hand doesn’t trick the eye with mirrors, but…

by Tonica Chagas* In his two new series, “Pictures of Magazines” and “Monadic Works,” Vik Muniz again plays with human visual perception to show that”a picture can be neither what is on a wall nor what is in our brain; it can be rather what is in between the two.” “Pictures of Magazines” aims to deal with physiognomic recognition through media on many levels and discloses some of the artist’s feelings about the new profile of Brazil, his native country. In “Monadic Works,” as if translating the theory of the mathematician and…

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by Dan Cameron If nobody ever saw what everyone remembers, what exactly are those memories made of? Vik Muniz, interview with Charles Stainback, 2001 For most of the first century following its invention, one of photography’s main goals was to persuade its viewer that it was faithfully recording reality. A primarily chemical process for registering rhe effects of light on chemically treated surfaces, and then relaying those effects to a second surface, and finally a third, photography was invariably viewed as a kind of objectifying medium, one that could only produce effects…

by Moacir dos Anjos In the book Ficciones, Jorge Luis Borges tells the literary accomplishments of a certain Pierre Menard, a writer from Nîmes whose work supposedly dates from the first third of the twentieth century. Ignored by his contemporaries, this writer accomplished a heroic and unique feat: he wrote the ninth and thirty-eighth chaptersÑas well as a fragment of chapter twenty-twoÑof the first part of Don Quixote, making his chapters match, “word for word and line for line,” those written by Miguel de Cervantes. Neither a charlatan nor a madman, Menard…

by Aracy Amaral I take great joy in greeting a fine artist, a creative Brazilian artist who is presenting his work for the first time in a museum of his hometown, São Paulo. In fact, a unique artist outside the mainstream and the exhausting platitudes we see in most art shows or countless catalog-invitations, which apparently ignore, to a great extent, the art production of the sixties, seventies, eighties, and nineties. Singularity appears to be an impossibility in our time, a critical situation that currently involves artists and art itself. Notwithstanding, Vik…

Rio – The artist Vik Muniz made us reflect deeply by showing us how to turn lemons into lemonade.  After being shot in the leg, Vik was compensated for the misfortune by his assailant, which he then used to try his luck in the US.  There he sought to make a living with what was possible. Working as a janitor for a mall parking lot, Vik discovered the value of trash and dedicated himself to making art out of recycled material.  He then ended up becoming one of the most recognized artists…

(Captions available in English)