ART CITIES:São Paulo-Vik Muniz

In a labor-intensive and meticulous process, Vik Muniz reproduces images the Western viewer is familiar with from the print media, such as art masterpieces or legendary photographs. After he has created his replicas, using a wide range of materials such as powdered pigment, dust, garbage or foods like sugar, chocolate and caviar, he photographs them and then destroys them so that they only exist as photographs.

By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Galeria Nara Roesler Archive

“Handmade”, the new exhibition by Vik Muniz, sees the artist revisit past avenues and procedures with renewed strength in an acute, concise inquiry into the thin line between reality and representation, original object and copy. Featuring more than 70 works, Muniz casts aside all narrative tools as he lays bare the skeleton of his art-making process, all the while toying with viewers’ certainties. During the research leading up to his recently released “Vik Muniz: Everything So Far: Catalogue Raisonné 1987-2015”, the artist realized how he’d relinquished a recurring procedure from early on in his career, when he wasn’t as involved in photography, the manipulation of the photographic surface after the capturing of the image. He then proceeded to reembrace those strategies, redoing and adding to the photographs. The result is an anthology-of-sorts comprising old and recent projects alike.  In the exhibition, the viewer won’t see works created from familiar images, nor references to mundane materials, here, Muniz references the vast tradition of Abstract Art as he distills its basic formulae to create unexpected ways to meditate on the image and the object, the ambiguity of the senses, and the importance of illusion. The exhibition outlines the artist’s constant concern with transcending the symbolic dimensions of image. An instance of an investigation that does not culminate with the action of photographing is “Two Nails” (1987/2016), stripped-down to a fault, the composition shows a sheet of paper hanging from two nails, one real, the other a photograph, creating a picture so ambiguous that it becomes impossible to tell the difference in a photo reproduction. “

Info: Curator: Luisa Duarte, Galeria Nara Roesler, Avenida Europa 655, Jd Europa, São Paulo, Duration 2/9-5/11/16, Days & Hours: Mon-Fri 10:00-19:00, Sat 10:00-15:00, www.nararoesler.com.br