Vik Muniz

The Collection Lambert in Avignon is housed within the Hôtel de Caumont, an elegant eighteenth-century building whose exterior and interiors are regularly transformed by visiting contemporary artists. In December 2011, the Collection Lambert invited the Brazilian-born, New York–based photographer Vik Muniz (born 1961) to respond to the collection and construct from it his own “imaginary museum,” after the example of André Malraux. Muniz duly took up residence at the Collection and his responses to its holdings were exhibited there from December 2011 to May 2012. In this volume accompanying the show, 110 masterpieces by Piranesi, Goya, Monet, Van Gogh, Cézanne, Picasso, Warhol and other canonical figures are recreated by the artist through incongruous materials such as wool, ketchup, chocolate sauce, pigments, magazines, confetti, dried plants and garbage.

Art objects are inanimate sad bits of matter hanging in the dark when no one is looking. The artist only does half of the work; the viewer has to come up with the rest, and it is by empowering the viewer that the miracle of art gains its force.
--Vik Muniz

An American artist of Brazilian origin, Vik Muniz stands out as one of the most articulate and innovative artists of his generation, equally at home working with images of chocolate sauce, spaghetti marinara, or the detritus of hole punchers. In doing so, he has carved out a unique niche within contemporary photography: one of trickster and philosopher as well as the creator of compelling, delightful images.
Reflex: A Vik Muniz Primer is a privileged, guided tour of the contents of Muniz's pyrotechnic imagination, walking us through each of his major series. From Equivalents, his fluffy, sculpted cotton “clouds,” to his latest color work, Magazines, Muniz accompanies each series with in-depth writing that tickles our minds with amusing anecdotes detailing his inspiration for each; fascinates by revealing his methodology and working process; and enlightens by unveiling the thinking and historical influences behind each image.

While visiting The Menil Collection, Vik Muniz, creator of what he calls "photographic delusions," happened upon the museum's exhibition planning room, which contains a small-scale model of galleries filled with tiny copies of artworks from the permanent collection--museum curators use these models in planning installations. Fascinated, Muniz took digital pictures of the maquettes and, for the exhibition Model Pictures, held at The Menil Collection in spring 2002, enlarged them to the scale of the original works of art that they represent. For the book Model Pictures, a conceptual extension of the exhibition, he shrinks his photographs of the maquettes to their miniature size, or 1:12 of the original artworks.