Vik Muniz. Of medium and message...

While we were in Seattle, KT and I were able to catch a fantastic retrospective of an artist I've been meaning to blog about for a while - Vik Muniz - at the Seattle Asian Art Museum.

Vik Muniz was born in São Paulo, Brazil, in 1961. Muniz started out as a sculptor, but successively became more interested in photographs of his sculptures than in the sculptures themselves.

So he basically creates images using highly perishable or unstable media, and photographs them. A direct descendant from Warhol, his interests in mass production and popular culture drive the subjects of his work - largely reproductions of famous images or artworks. His technical execution is amazing, and the relationship between medium and subject are insightful and clever.

Enough gush - just check some of it out:


Some guy checking out Portrait of Alice Liddell, after Lewis Carroll [Alice in Wonderland], which is made completely from toys and candy.


Saturn, after Goya, contrasted with Goya's original work.


A shot from one of my favourite series - Pictures of Clouds


Double Mona Lisa, after Warhol, done in peanut butter and jelly.


Part of the Sugar Children series, reproductions in sugar of photographs taken of the children of sugar plantation workers in St. Kitts.

This whole 'Look at me! I'm drawing with peanut butter!' thing could come off as contrived, but Muniz is really insightful and painstaking in his execution, which keeps the dialogue at a higher level.

His work reminds me of a passage in a book I am reading (and looooving) right now - Ghostwritten by David Mitchell:

The last of the cherry blossom. On the tree, it turns ever more perfect. And when it's perfect, it falls. And then of course once it hits the ground it gets all mushed up. So it's only absolutely perfect when it's falling through the air, this way and that, for the briefest time...'

I guess what I'm suggesting is that Muniz would agree, and that he works to create and then capture these brief moments of constructed perfection. The show's on until January 14th. If you're in Seattle over the next month or so, try to check it out.