Vik MunizSikkema Jenkins & Co.

For over 20 years Vik Muniz has consistently defined art as a subtle connection between mind and matter by recreating iconic images while simultaneously revealing and debasing the process of their making. While keeping within the conceptual frameworks of Muniz's previously established images, Verso marks a return to the object-making that first brought him attention in the late 1980s.

Verso consists of a group of 3-dimensional trompe-l'oeils of the actual backs of such iconic works as Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, Van Gogh's Starry Night and Seurat's La Grande Jatte that, over a period of six years, Muniz photographed and systematically studied in partnership with the curatorial and conservation departments of MOMA, the Guggenheim and the Art Institute of Chicago, as well as with a team of dedicated craftsman, artists, forgers, and technicians. These are disconcertingly faithful reproductions in a 1:1 scale realized in an inch-by-inch process that did not spare the slightest detail. Every scratch, dent or scribble is physically reproduced to photographic precision. Authentic looking labels, worn-away tape, faded pencil notations and actual period hardware and carpentry make it hard even for an expert to disbelieve they are seeing the actual backs of these masterpieces.

Along with Verso, Muniz will be exhibiting equally confounding recreations of the backs of famous photographs from the New York Times archive at MOMA. The backs are full of cancelled dates, yellowed newspaper captions and rubber cement stains.

Vik Muniz
Verso (Starry Night), 2008
Mixed media object
29 x 36.25 x 12 inches
Copyright Vik Muniz 2008
Courtesy Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New York




Vik Muniz
Verso (Nighthawks), 2008
Mixed media object
33 x 60 x 12 inches
Copyright Vik Muniz 2008
Courtesy Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New York




Vik Muniz
Verso (The Red Studio), 2008
Mixed media object
71.25 x 86.25 x 20 inches
Copyright Vik Muniz 2008
Courtesy Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New York




Vik Muniz
Verso (Trotsky, Bolshevist Minister of War,
Photographed Recently in His Office in Moscow, 2008
Mixed media object
5.125 x 7.125 inches
Copyright Vik Muniz 2008
Courtesy Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New York




Vik Muniz
Verso (The Tragic End of 13,500 Miles of Air Travel), 2008
Mixed media
7 x 9.125 inches
Copyright Vik Muniz 2008
Courtesy Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New York




Vik Muniz
Verso (The New President), 2008
Mixed media object
9.375 x 12.75 inches
Copyright Vik Muniz 2008
Courtesy Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New York

Vik Muniz's retrospective, organized by the Miami Art Museum in 2006, is currently on view in Mexico City at the Antiguo Colegio de San Ildefonso. His work is in the collection of many museums including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Guggenheim, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Centre George Pompidou, the Centro Cultural Reina Sofia, and the Irish Museum of Modern Art.

Muniz was born in Brazil and currently lives and works in Brazil and Brooklyn.

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Vik Muniz
VERSO
September 6 – October 11, 2008
Opening Reception: Saturday, September 6, 6-8 pm

Gallery Hours: Tuesday – Saturday, 10 to 6

Sikkema Jenkins & Co.
530 West 22nd Street
New York, NY 10011
212.929.2262

For additional information visit the Sikkema Jenkins & Co.
http://www.sikkemajenkinsco.com/