Vik Muniz
Multi-disciplinary Brazilian Artist By Adriana SzkolnikAppearances are deceiving in more ways than one.
Artist Vik Muniz’s life is an old-fashioned rags-to-riches story. Born into an underprivileged family in São Paulo, Brazil, in 1961, he made his way up the art world ladder thanks to his sharp mimetic gestures. Now based in New York City, Muniz experiments with iconic imagery recaptured in different formats, designating artificial reality to already frequently-copied artwork. In his best-known process, he replicates familiar pieces using everyday materials like sugar, chocolate syrup, dust and diamonds, then photographs them; these photographs, not their painstakingly assembled subjects, are his true artworks. A Jackson Pollock in chocolate syrup, or a recreation of Andy Warhol's Jackie Kennedy portraits done in ketchup is not only visually stunning, but cleverly humorous. A sort of illusionist, Muniz has based his life's work on the old saying that appearances are deceiving, but he reveals the constant back-and-forth process behind that homily: Is it real or isn’t it? For Muniz, the pleasure lies in savoring the exact moment when we realize that our eyes have been fooled, when we see an image in a cloud just as it dissolves into something else entirely.
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