Vik Muniz

Ok, we saw this exhibition at the Antiguo Colegio de San Ildefonso, which right north of Zocalo last Sunday. I know that it has almost been a week, but I wanted to write about it separately because it was soo interesting and great. The only thing I don't know is why haven't I heard about this guy ages ago and why haven't I seen any exhibitions by him in New York...it might be my ignorance (James has heard about him before), but I think he is certainly not as well known as he should be.

Although he lives in the US, he was born in Brazil and could be mostly associated with the pop art movement (although goes way beyond it, I think). Apparently, Warhol really liked and appreciated his work. I think his work is in fact more complex and interesting than Warhol's. Basically everything he does is exhibited as a photograph (larger or smaller), and he works with all sorts of materials such as wire, diamond, thread, ketchup, ink, chocolate sauce, dirt, and sugar reproducing famous cultural imprints in our brains, mostly photos or paintings. So, for instance one of my favorites was the portraits of young black boys who worked on a sugar plantation, and Muniz took their photograph and reproduced them perfectly using white sugar on black paper. It is the least of all that this technique is self-referential in many interesting ways, but it also comments on sugar's cultural and economic value in conjunction with questions of race, child labour, etc.

Another set of pictures reproduced the Warhol series of Jackie Kennedy in ketchup. Again, the reproduction is incredibly realist, but also a funny play on Warhol and American consumerism both of images and of ketchup. Anyways, these are just a few examples, the exhibition was very extensive and every section was surprising and refreshing. There were thread created landscapes, diamond created image of Elisabeth Taylor and Monica Vitti, as well as the famous photo of the young soldier boy in the Civil War recreated with toy soldiers...(see above).

I think you, art enthusiasts out there, would have loved this show! If anything by him comes up in NYC please definitely go and see it, you won't be disappointed. More on him on this blog:
http://www.vikmuniz.net/www/index.html