Rena Bransten Gallery is pleased to present Fotocubismo, an exhibition of recent work by internationally celebrated artist Vik Muniz. A decades long fascination with the relationship between photography, memory, and the mental image has been the foundation for much of Muniz’ work, which utilizes a staggering array of everyday materials and objects to re-create art historical images, taking their final form as photographic prints. In two recent series, Handmade and Surfaces, Muniz applies various hand interventions on his photographs, blurring the line between the “real” and the documentation – returning to an early interest in combining a “thing” with its photographic representation.  

In the pieces on view in this exhibition, from the Surfaces series, Muniz reimagines work from several Cubist artists – Maria Blanchard, Georges Braque, Juan Gris, Fernand Leger, Jean Metzinger, Pablo Picasso, and Diego Rivera – employing a layered and iterative process of collaging, photographing, and hand manipulating. The final unique pieces are a seductive combination of folds, cuts, and objects alongside their photographed counterparts, leaving the viewer the enticing task of unpacking their expectations of the surface of an artwork.  

Vik Muniz lives and works in New York, NY and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Recent solo exhibitions have been presented at Sarasota Museum of Art, FL; Museu de Arte Moderna de Salvador, Brazil; Belvedere Museum Vienna, Austria; the High Museum of Art, Atlanta, GA; and Mauritshuis, The Hague, Netherlands. He has featured in several biennials, including the 56th Venice Biennale (2015) and the 24th Bienal de São Paulo (1998). His works are included in the collections of Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, France; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Tate Gallery, London; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, CA; J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, CA; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Museum of Modern Art, New York; and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, CA; among many others. He was named a UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador in 2011 for his work with the catadores of Rio de Janeiro, on whom the documentary film Waste Land was based. 

Rena Bransten Gallery