A decades long fascination with the relationship between photography, memory, and the mental image has been the foundation for much of Vik Muniz’ work, which utilizes a staggering array of everyday materials and objects to re-create art historical images, taking their final form as photographic prints. In two recent series, Handmade and Surfaces, Muniz applies various hand interventions on his photographs, blurring the line between the “real” and the documentation – returning to an early interest in combining a “thing” with its photographic representation.
In the pieces on view in this exhibition, from the Surfaces series, Muniz reimagines work from several Cubist artists – Maria Blanchard, Georges Braque, Juan Gris, Fernand Leger, Jean Metzinger, Pablo Picasso, and Diego Rivera – employing a layered and iterative process of collaging, photographing, and hand manipulating. The final unique pieces are a seductive combination of folds, cuts, and objects alongside their photographed counterparts, leaving the viewer the enticing task of unpacking their expectations of the surface of an artwork.
Work
