Vik Muniz was born in 1961 in Sao Paulo, Brazil, and now lives in New York and Rio de Janeiro. He is now an internationally renowned photographer and a visual artist. Vik Muniz is good at creating with unexpected materials: dust, syrup, chocolate, diamonds, caviar, toys, paper punches, garbage, dry dyes and other materials as inspiration, long-term simulation of predecessors’ masterpieces to create, by tapping the audience's subconscious vision Library for further research.
The "CATADORES" series exhibition was held in 2008. It is a collaborative work of the artist returning from his headquarters in Brooklyn to his birthplace, Brazil, at the world's largest garbage dumping site in the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro. It took Vik three years to collaborate with garbage collectors to create this great work, imitating the works of early master painters, showing the dignity and despair of the garbage workers themselves.
The "CATADORES" series is composed of many works, the themes are all taken from the classic paintings of early masters, such as Pablo Picasso "Ironing Woman", Jacques Louis David "The Death of Marat", Jean Francois Millet "The sower", etc. . At first glance, it will make the audience feel deja vu and become interested in its novel performance techniques. After a closer look, I discovered that the famous paintings consist of food, dirt, old toys, plastics, electrical wires, torn clothes, waste tires, and other kinds of garbage.
It turned out that in the garbage dump, Vik took photos of the garbage pickers and asked them to pose in various world-famous paintings, and then projected the photos onto a huge white canvas, and used the garbage they picked up with the garbage pickers. Fill in the projected images, and finally, remake these works with the camera. Among them, various artistic creation forms such as picture collage, reorganization of materials and photography are used.
However, do we ask: Are artists just imitating famous paintings?
Compared with the masterpieces of early masters of painting, Vik's "CATADORES" series of works have more intense colors. In the treatment of characters and background, all kinds of garbage are used to fill the background to make it rich in colors and obvious in details. In addition, fine sand is used to outline the contours and shadows of the characters, which is simple and vivid, and the single use of brown makes the characters stand out. The final product is made into a large-scale work that is as tall as one person, which has a strong visual impact.
In this way, it is actually intentional. When viewers look at the works from a distance, they will first search for images of classic famous paintings in the subconscious visual library, and when they get closer, they will carefully study the content of the works. There may even be an interesting phenomenon in which the audience looks at a work from far and near, near and far, back and forth several times. Progressive visual enjoyment will lead to thinking: "Who is the person in the painting?" "Why is it made of garbage?" "What is the meaning of it and the original expression?"
These questions may be that the artist wants to communicate with The audience's dialogue. In an interview with the media, Vik Muniz once said: "What I want to be able to do is to change the lives of people with the same materials they deal with every day." They are fighting against the government for their legitimate rights and interests. After the work is completed, the trash pickers who participated in the creation of the "CATADORES" series have indeed changed. Some people have gained the courage and support for continuous struggle, some have discovered the dignity and joy of work, and some have never
returned ... but Vik himself? One of the works of "CATADORES" "Marat (Sebastiao)" was sold for a high price of about 260,000 RMB in London. Vik donated the proceeds to the Gramachou Scavenger Organization for the improvement of the environment and construction. With the continuous development of science and technology, copying and printing have become easy. Early masterpieces of paintings have been continuously copied and printed in modern and contemporary times, just like huge garbage. Vik, who is in it, is actually a trash picker and a classic of the early days. Cultural images are recycled and used to re-gave contemporary meanings and shine with the light of this era.
This is also the meaning of contemporary art that I admire.
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