Vik Muniz: Reflex. On view at MAM

Miami Art Museum. From Feb 10th through May 28th, 2006Since the mid-1990s, Brazilian artist Vik Muniz has been making photographs where the subject matter are images constructed from a variety of non-artistic, ephemeral materials like beans, dirt, sugar, wire, strings, chocolate syrup, or some times he uses more sophisticated elements like for instance, diamonds. Muniz photographs could be once familiar – often recognizable for their iconic value like well known history characters or media cliches – or some times are reinterpreted and appear as new, due to his own ways to construct the subject of his works. These photographs will challenge the perception of the viewer by re-presenting what they already have seen before, but not really, because after a second glance, the viewer will be able to discover how many levels of meaning the artist is using to construct his images. Take the example of that Che Guevara photograph from the 60s. This image have been so manipulated by the international press that one wouldn’t give an instant to look at it again, however, in Muniz version, the image appears reconstructed from black beans soup, providing it with new enlightening meaning. Muniz examines how the scale of elements, the use of mediums and its relationship with its content, as well as the viewerís own subjectivity can affect how an image is perceived and reinterpreted. The works of Muniz carries a chameleon-like quality since the artist is continually shifting between roles, he could be a painter, sculptor, draftsman, photographer, writer, conceptualist, prankster, and even an art critic. All his works are consistently questioning how visual information is constructed, presented and received, and the ideological value implied in the process. Reflex incorporates approximately 100 works of the artist produced from 1988 to the present. It will include images from all his major series like The Best of Life, Equivalents, Pictures of Thread, The Sugar Children, Pictures of Earthworks, Monadic Works and Pictures of Junk. Parallel to the exhibition, MAM has commissioned the artist to create a skywriting project that will bring the exhibition out of the museum and into the public realm. The week of the opening, the work of Muniz will be seen against the blue sky above Miami when a skywriting plane will draw an image of a cloud as part of his latest series called Cloud Cloud projects. For more information, please call: 305.375.3000