Vik Muniz: Pictures of Junk

Vik Muniz: Pictures of Junk at Sikkema Jenkins & Co. in New York, NY. "...Muniz uses photography to create images out of non-traditional materials - from chocolate to peanut butter and jelly, from dirt to toys. The work raises questions about the nature of representation. For this exhibition, the artist has created new images in the series Pictures of Junk. Working with garbage -- outmoded exercise bikes, crushed soda cans, rusty chains and old tires -- Muniz creates works after mythological subjects by famous painters, from Cranach's Apollo and Diana to Bourguereau's Orestes Pursued by the Furies. In this series, Muniz meditates on the artist's eternal quest for the ideal in regard to specific historical environments. The choice of subject is aimed at exposing idealization as rhetorical simplification, as forms of Greek Gods and their cautionary antics appear - systematically crafted emptiness amid post-industrial rubble." More Works by Vik Muniz at Rena Bransten Gallery and at Vik Muniz's Personal Site.