Eccentric Picasso reproductions

Brazil’s Vik Muniz to present new collection of works at the Xippas Gallery on Thursday

MARGARITA POURNARA

Brazilian artist Vik Muniz, whose exhibition of new works opens at the Xippas Gallery this week, is more than just a photographer. You could call him a director, a creator with enormous imagination whose portraits are made of sugar, earth, ketchup, caviar, ashes, thread, diamonds, string and chocolate sauce, among other materials. When this alternative canvas is put together, the artist captures it on film. More than anything else, his photographs are “images of images,” intelligent and suggestive depictions which ultimately undermine his own means of expression. At the same time, a number of his works are eccentric reproductions of great masterpieces.

Muniz’s second solo exhibition in Greece opens this Thursday at the downtown Athenian gallery. Showcasing works which have never been seen before, the collection is the artist’s personal take on seven celebrated female portraits by Pablo Picasso. In this series, Muniz leaves behind all the disparate elements he used in the past and enters a new creative chapter in which he works with the raw material of painting: color pigments.

In “Dora Maar,” “Weeping Woman,” “Jacqueline” and “Olga” among others, he essentially dispenses with the original, well-known works by creating an artificial representation which plays with the notion of visual perception. His aim is not to mislead the viewer, but rather to enable him to set in motion a judgment mechanism as to what he is seeing.

“Two elements remain constant throughout my work: I alway record elements which portray other elements and I always portray things which exist for a limited amount of time. I’m a photographer. Why should I photograph something which is not ephemeral?” Muniz says. After taking the photographs, Muniz destroys the original canvas leaving only its traces on film.

Born in Sao Paulo, Brazil, in 1961, Muniz has been living and working in New York since the 1980s. While he began his career as a sculptor, he gradually moved into photographic reproductions of his sculptures, before finally dedicating himself exclusively to photography. The artist has had major solo exhibitions in various museums around the world.

Xippas Gallery, 53D Sophocleous, tel 210.331.9333. To November 24.