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Auditions Sold as Suite of four: $16,000 |
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“The object in the picture seemed to satisfy an eternal longing for its own sublimation – a body, freed from infinite materiality, meeting its own spirit.”* Early in his career, Vik Muniz created a series of photographs that he came to call Individuals. Working with a single lump of white plasticine and a set of rules, he fashioned one deliberately ambiguous sculpture after another, photographing each only to destroy it afterwards to repeat the process until he had sixty images. He printed them as platinum prints, and displayed them along with empty pedestals, so that the public could imagine the different sculptures in the space. Muniz’s inspiration came from photographs made by sculptors from their own work, chiefly Brancusi and Rosso. Writes Muniz, “The images of the sculptures are idealized objects. Seen from the perfect vantage, they offer no clues as to scale, material or weight. Their flatness leaves room for myriad interpretations; their ambiguity renders them part of anyone’s experience. They have become mental objects.”* The exhibition of Individuals marked Muniz’s decision to dedicate himself to photography in a novel way. He began to produce, and continues to produce, objects that have documentation as their main objective. For his major exhibition, Reflex: A Vik Muniz Primer, the artist decided to revisit Individuals as a portfolio of photogravures with text. The artist’s original negatives were scanned and made into fifty-two copper plates that were produced as photogravures. The artist’s original text was printed by letterpress also included in the suite. The prints are stored in a handmade maple box designed by the artist, with an attached frame/cover that can be secured in an upright position to display the work, one print a week for every week of the year. *Reflex: A Vik Muniz Primer, Published by Aperture Foundation / distributed by Thames & Hudson, text courtesy and copyright © 2005 Vik Muniz |
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Vik Muniz
Brazilian-born artist Vik Muniz photographs images he creates, using unconventional materials such as chocolate syrup, sugar, soil and string, and then discards the originals. His photographs and prints offer a representation of the illusion he has ‘drawn.’ Muniz investigates the mechanisms of perception to reveal how the eye can be tricked and deceived. “What really fascinates me about the photographic process,” he says, “is that it endorses the existence of things. A chocolate puddle with the likeness of Freud becomes part of the same history as its notable subject. Photography reveals their true identity as objects.” (Abbe Harris July 2003)
Auditions, a suite of four photogravures, feature satirical sculptural busts representing four basic and universal human emotions: happiness, sadness, anger and pensiveness. Auditions initially began as a project of photographs of sculptures representing fifty-two different facial expressions. After completing the first four (that now make up Auditions), Muniz abandoned the project and initiated Individuals, the series of photogravures based on fifty-two photographs of various sculptures shaped out of one piece of clay. Published by Graphicstudio, Muniz’s Auditions are universally humorous character studies that recall the 19th century satirical sculptures by the French satirist Honoré Daumier (1808–79).
Vik Muniz has long been fascinated with the work of Chuck Close. At Graphicstudio, he pays homage to Close’s Fingerprint portraits, and uses found rubber stamps in the studio (such as TO BE DESTROYED, NOT FOR SALE, ABANDONED PROJECT) for inking his own image. The resulting lithograph was printed on a deep yellow screenprint background. Other Muniz projects at Graphicstudio include two portraits in photogravure and lithographic renderings of paintings of snapshots.
“Vik Muniz might be billed as a photographer, and photographs are generally the end product of his work. But in another age he might have been an alchemist, transforming base lead into refined gold. In Vik’s case, lead has been replaced by light. He is clearly a visual artist who tinkers equally with light and the mechanisms of perception that decipher the messages light conveys. He tricks the eye to reveal the tricks the eye itself can play and how that trickery has been used by ‘shamans, priests, artists, and con men’ throughout history to evoke both power and belief. Vik works with the most rudimentary materials–sugar, soil, string, wire, chocolate syrup–to reconstruct images that we carry in a vast collective reservoir of visual memory. The quality of his draftsmanship with these rude materials displays a gift for bringing brilliance and humor to the commonplace–not unlike the physical genius of Charlie Chaplin or Buster Keaton. Vik photographs these images, and then discards the originals, so that we are left with a tantalizing representation of the illusion he has created.”
-Magill, Mark. “Vik Muniz.” Bomb Magazine Fall 2000
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Reflex: A Vik Muniz Primer
Published in conjunction with the exhibition Vik Muniz: Reflex, organized by the Miami Art Museum and curated by Peter Boswell. Copyright 2005 Aperture Foundation, New York, New York, USA. 204 pages, 150 color plates, hardcover
The book can be purchased through CAM's online Museum Store.
For more more information on Vik Muniz's work, visit his website.
Questions? If you have any questions about Graphicstudio or a work of art you see on this site please email Graphicstudio. If you have difficulty with any part of this site, please email the Webmaster.
Copyright and Reproduction
The electronic images available on this site are subject to copyright and may be covered by other restrictions as well. The images are made available to the general public as a representation of work produced at USF Graphicstudio. Copy or redistribution in any manner for commercial use is not permitted. Anyone wishing to use any of these images for commercial use, publication, or for any purpose other than personal fair use must first request and receive prior written permission from the University of South Florida Institute for Research in Art. Please contact Director of Marketing and Sales Kristin Soderqvist at 813.974.5871 for more information.
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