Hezi Cohen Gallery, Tel Aviv

Vik Muniz
Seated Black Woman, after Félix Vallotton, 2013
Digital C-Print
131x101.5 cm
 
 
VIK MUNIZ
Pictures of Magazines 2
 
4 September - 25 October 2014
 
Hezi Cohen Gallery is pleased to present Pictures of Magazines 2 - a new solo show by Vik Muniz.
 
"In this series I recreated icons from the history of art using images and text literally torn from books and magazines. Because of the material I used here the viewer must work much harder to "see" the reproduced painting. The playing field is leveled: image and material have equal importance, and even within the overall picture no specific component is privileged - a tabloid's Scarlett Johansson snapshot, Klimt's iconic portrait of Adele, a random bit of text, or a snippet of a Gauguin painting, all carry equal weight. This practice reflects contemporary life with its incessant influx of information, which leaves an endless stream of garbage in its wake. Here, the content of the stream becomes raw material in an act of renewal.
 
I see this series as a continuation of the "Pictures of Garbage" series, in which I used recycled garbage to make portraits of waste pickers. But here, rather than using physical garbage as my medium, I recycle mental "garbage" from the endless media onslaught of our culture to reproduce images that feel familiar, things we may have looked at but have never really seen. This is a quest to reconsider what we have left behind in our voracious pursuit of the new."
 
- Vik Muniz
 
Vik Muniz was born as Vicente José de Oliveira Muniz to a working-class family in São Paulo, Brazil, in 1961. Relocating to the United States in 1983, he has since become one of the best-known contemporary Brazilian artists working today. He lives and works in New York and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
 
Muniz has had solo shows at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York; Museu de arte Moderna, Rio de Janeiro; Centre National de la Photographie, Paris; MACRO, Rome; and the solo exhibition 'Pictures of Anything', held this year at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art. In 2001 Muniz represented Brazil at the 49th Venice Biennale. A traveling retrospective of his work was organized by the Miami Art Museum in 2006. His work is in the collection of museums worldwide, including the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York; The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Fondation Cartier pour l'Art Contemporain, Paris; The Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; and Tate Gallery, London. Muniz was the subject of the documentary film 'Waste Land' (2010), directed by Lucy Walker, which won the 2010 Sundance Audience Award for Best Film and was nominated for an Academy Award.
 
 
Hezi Cohen Gallery
54 Wolfson Street
66042 Tel Aviv
Israel
T: +972 (0)36398788
E: [email protected]
 
Hezi Cohen Gallery
 
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