I have always loved Vik Muniz’s photographs. His unbounding creativity in the way he experiments with non-traditional materials, such as chocolate and sugar, junk and toys, to create the images he captures through his camera lens is inspiring. After visiting a private collection earlier this year filled with large scale photographs by the artist, I began to track and admire his work more and more. Muniz currently has a retrospective at Centro de Arte Contemporáneo de Málaga – his largest European exhibition to date – and has had numerous solo shows including one at the Whitney Museum of American Art.
At Art Basel Miami Beach this year, Vik Muniz showed a new work entitled Flowers, after Warhol that was recently part of The Metropolitan Museum of Art exhibition Regarding Warhol: Sixty Artists, Fifty Years. You can barely tell from far away that these are photographs, composed of small objects in order to form images distinctively similar to Warhols flower silkscreens. Also on view at the Sikkema Jenkins booth was a photograph Muniz composed in a similar manner to reference Jasper Johns’ famous flag work. I know Muniz will continue to make a name for himself as one of the foremost contemporary art photographers.
Flowers, after Warhol; @ Art Basel Miami Beach
A more professional shot of the piece
Marilyn Monroe (from Pictures of Diamonds), 2004
Cibachrome (*which I also saw at a private collection on the UES earlier this year)
Boy Blowing Bubbles, after Edouard Manet, 2012; from his “Pictures of Magazines 2” series
Where Art Meets Fashion 