| VIK MUNIZ |
Internationally renowned conceptual photographer Vik Muniz was born in Brazil. He moved to the U.S. in 1983, living first in Chicago before settling in New York. His work has been exhibited extensively throughout the world, with solo shows at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, the Fundació Joan Miró in Barcelona, and the Irish Museum of Contemporary Art, Dublin. In 2006, the Miami Art Museum organized a major retrospective, Vik Muniz: Reflex, which also traveled to the Seattle Art Museum and the Museum of Contemporary Art, Montreal, among other venues. Muniz’s photographs are preserved in numerous museum collections, including the Art Institute of Chicago; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Tate Gallery, London; and the Centro Cultural Reina Sofia, Madrid.
One of the most imaginative artists of his generation, Muniz recreates iconic works of art and other familiar images in a variety of unexpected materials—such as diamonds, chocolate syrup, caviar, sugar and dust—which he then photographs. From his Pictures of Diamonds, in which famous photos of Hollywood divas are rendered in glittering jewels, to the Pictures of Color, in which paint color chips remake well-known Impressionist pictures, Muniz challenges perception in a witty and playful spirit.
Shovel and Light Bulb are part of the Earthworks series which the artist created in 2005-06. Referencing ancient Peruvian Nazca drawings and earthwork art of the 1960s, Muniz “drew” everyday objects in the earth at various mining sites across Brazil. The manpower and heavy machinery provided by Rio de Janeiro-based Companhia Vale do Rio Doce, the largest producer of iron-ore and nickel in the world, allowed Muniz to work on an enormous scale, creating images over 400 meters long, which he later photographed from a helicopter.
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