Vik Muniz | Vik Muniz, Arthur Ollman | An Artist Dialogue Series
FREE - Auditorium doors open at 5:30 p.m.
To celebrate the publication of Vik Muniz, the acclaimed artist discusses his extraordinary work with Arthur Ollman, author of the new book and Founding Director of the Museum of Photographic Arts in San Diego.
Vik Muniz is best known for his joyful, quirky, dark, and occasionally mind-boggling work that riffs on popular photographic imagery, referencing social icons and cultural realities and juxtaposing these themes in fascinating ways. The new book Vik Muniz features an extraordinary selection of works that span the artist's entire career—more than 150 color illustrations display the enormous range of Muniz’s work and the disorienting and expansive logic of his world. International icon Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis is portrayed with diamonds with as much reverence as Brazilian landfill workers whose portraits are created from the trash they collect. The Mona Lisa is recreated in peanut butter and jelly. Artist Jackson Pollock is depicted in his studio in a work made entirely out of chocolate syrup. Throughout, Muniz’s irreverent and thought-provoking approach to his subjects reveals the shaky underpinnings of universally accepted “truths.”
Copies of Vik Muniz (Delmonico Books/Prestel, 2016) are available for purchase and signing at the end of event.
A comprehensive retrospective of Vik Muniz’s work is travelling throughout Latin America in major museums such as Banco de la Republica in Bogota, Colombia and the Museo de la Universidad Nacional de Tres de Febrero- MUNTREF in Buenos Aires. The retrospective also travelled in Mexico, North America and Canada. Other important exhibitions were seen in museums such as The Long Museum West Bund, Shanghai; Tel Aviv Museum of Art; the Whitney Museum of American Art; Museum of Modern Art, NY; Collection Lambert, Avignon; Moscow House of Photography; Museu de Arte Moderna, Rio de Janeiro; Museu de Arte Moderna, São Paulo; and the International Center of Photography, New York. In 2016 two major solo shows are scheduled to open at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta and the Summer 2016, the Mauritshuis, in The Hague, a special project in collaboration with the museum.
Besides his artistic activities, Vik Muniz is involved in educational and social projects in Brazil and the US. His documentary Waste Land (2010) was nominated for the Oscars and won the Sundance Audience Award for Best Film. In 2011 Unesco nominated him Good Will Ambassador and in January 2013 he received the Crystal Award by the World Economic Forum. In 2014 he finished building Escola Vidigal, a school of art and technology for low-income children from the Vidigal community in Rio de Janeiro, which is scheduled to open in Fall 2015. Muniz was commissioned by the MTA to do the 72nd street and 2nd Ave. subway station in New York opening to the public in 2017.
Vik Muniz's works are included in the collections of the major international museums such as the Art Institute of Chicago, Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, The J. Paul Getty Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art (New York), Museu de Arte Moderna de São Paulo, and Victoria and Albert Museum in London, among others. He has also been a guest speaker in major universities and museums including Oxford, Harvard, Yale,New York University, the International Center of Photography, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the Museum of Modern Art of São Paulo, Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, MIT in Boston and World Economic Forum in Davos, and the Ted Conference among others.
Arthur Ollman has been a photographer for fifty years. He has had more than twenty five one person exhibitions in museums and galleries worldwide. His art is in many public collections. As founding Director of the Museum of Photographic Arts, in San Diego, for twent three years, he curated more than one hunderd exhibitions, many travelling to institutions in nine countries. He has written all or parts of twenty five books, and numerous articles. From 2006-2011 he directed The School of Art, and Design at San Diego State University. In 2012 he became the Chairman of the Foundation for the Exhibition of Photography, an international organization, which creates and circulates major exhibitions around the world.
Initiated and organized by Arezoo Moseni in 2004, Artist Dialogues Series provide an open forum for understanding and appreciation of contemporary art. Artists are paired with critics, curators, gallerists, writers or other artists to converse about art and the potential of exploring new ideas.
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