The Contemporary Art Center of Malaga will be showcasing, through December 2, 2012, an exhibition that has been considered the largest retrospective in Europe of Vicente Jose de Oliveira Muniz (Sao Paulo, 1961), known as Vik Muniz, Brazilian artist based in New York, who kicked off his sculptor career in late 1980s, and became interested in the photographic reproductions of his work.
Since his childhood, Muniz explored the art of drawing, a skill that gave him the opportunity to obtain s scholarship when he was fourteen years old. However, he was interested in studying Psychology, but life led him to get a degree on Communication, specifically in the Publicity branch. He developed his career as an artist in New York City, alternating sculpture, drawing and photography. He mostly works on reproductions of images of acclaimed classic artworks, famous faces or anonymous people in every-day scenes, by using un-conventional materials such as food, garbage or any objet he finds, and there are no limits in terms of scale.
The exhibition at CAC Malaga, with the curatorship of Fernando Frances, defines the different work stages of Muniz through different ideas, which have in common different points of view to be taken into account when admiring the piece: context, the way the artwork reaches out the public, on what formal basis it is conceived. Over one hundred snapshots reflect his work, which merges “a pop attitude in terms of the theme, with a pictorial approach when it comes to process and materials”, the artist says.
There is social denunciation in his work, taking into account that aren’t randomly chosen or just because they visually fit the final result. An example of this are the diamonds used on Elizabeth Taylor, 2004; the sugar of Valentina, The Fastest, 1996 and magazine cuttings to represent himself in Self Portrait, 2003. The dust accumulated at the exhibition halls of museums, tomato sauce or chocolate are other elements that eventually appear on his work.
CAC Malaga
C/ Alemania, s/n 29001 Malaga Spain
Source: Press release
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