artnexus #41

Vik Muniz (São Paulo) uses photography as a resource that allows him to make the viewer think about what and how he perceives. Before the subduing world of daily images that we face, those of Muniz become a challenge.

The reproduction that we see registers a previous work that the artist realizes in his studio by handling materials as diverse as chocolate, newsprint, and enlarged photographs. As an example, let it suffice so mention the Socrates of our cover, the figure of the boy is resting among the waste, streamers, and other objects used in Carnival. By using such variety of resources, he constructs some pictures, as he himself calls them, in which he could use paint, engravings, and three-dimensional. resources. The photographing of those previously worked images, in some cases extravagantly elaborate, is disquieting both in the characterization of what we see —since the photography is the end of a previously constructed process— and through the supposed documentary value that is. typically attributed to it. The question that suddenly arises is "how true is what we see in the photographs?" In spite of the fact that the photograph has suffered countless manipulations since its invention, we usually have faith in its role as an immediate document, bearer of veracity. 

Moreover, the minute construction of its images invites the viewer to reflect on a laborious handicraft into which art that only retains the use of technical ability typically falls. 

IVONNE PINI