Exhibition Review: Vik Muniz's Scraps
Gente Indo, Scraps, 2021 Archival inkjet print, Diptych, framed: 57 1/2 x 158 1/2 inches (146.1 x 402.6 cm) overall One of a kind, Courtesy the artist and Sikkema Jenkins & Co. ⒸVik Muniz
Written by Megan May Walsh
Edited by Jana Massoud
Memory, according to Foucault, is a “ritual of power” - selecting what is remembered, what is forgotten, what is memorialized, and what is lost. It is a continuous narrative constructed by past experiences, dreams, hopes, and imagination. Yet it is riddled with disruptions and discontinuities for it is only scraps of things remembered, casted by imagination as a mosaic of imperfect perception. In his exhibition, Scraps, Vik Muniz steps into the metaphysical landscape of memory to pick up the fragments of forgotten time and fading images and piece together an archaeology of his past by memorializing it in his present.
Everest, Scraps, 2021 Archival inkjet print, Framed: 50 1/2 x 71 inches (128.3 x 180.3 cm) One of a kind, Courtesy the artist and Sikkema Jenkins & Co. ⒸVik Muniz
Sikkema Jenkins & Co. will be presenting Vik Muniz’s solo exhibition, Scraps, from February 17 through April 9, 2022, where viewers can experience the multilayered-collaged mosaics and the perception of reality that emerges from the abstract surface. Each piece of the collection is created by assembling together painted elements from Muniz’s studio into an abstract collage that is then photographed, painted, cut up, and pieced together to form the photograph you see before you.
In the moments that we, as human beings, struggle to grasp at the shimmering fragments of memories mercilessly scraped away by time, a patchwork of images collects in the forefront of our minds. This patchwork orients and reorients itself with memorabilia, offering reminders of the past, and imagination filling in the forgotten moments. Vik Muniz’s exhibition is this moment materialized. Each photograph is pieced together from elements that serve as a sliver of memorabilia from his life pulled together from moments abstracted by time to create a mosaic of a memorable instant of a past experience. While each photo is glaringly realistic, the edges of forgetting tear through the seams of the mosaic. Each groove that cuts through the photo is a reminder of both, the impossibility of perfect perception from memory, and the magic of limitless imagination in stitching together forgotten time.
Protest, Scraps, 2020 Archival inkjet print, Framed: 50 1/2 x 73 1/2 inches (128.3 x 186.7 cm) One of a kind, Courtesy the artist and Sikkema Jenkins & Co. ⒸVik Muniz
Scraps is the artistic materialization of memory and a reminder that all that comes together is commenced to fall apart and come together again. The moments that awe us, the people that inspire us, and the experiences that create us will always be vulnerable to the cruel distortions of time. However, they also hone the potential to be reconstructed into something beautiful and memorialized against the dissolution of time. The latter is what Vik Muniz accomplishes when he sorts through the depths and wonders of his own memory to preserve the recurring scenes in his mind by creating mosaics with scraps of memory and wisps of imagination.
Sikkema Jenkins & Co is a contemporary art gallery in New York. Located at 530 W 22nd St, New York, NY, Sikkema Jenkins & Co currently has Vik Muniz’s exhibition Scraps on display from February 17 till April 9, 2022. For more information on exhibitions and events, please visit Sikkema & Jenkins & Co’s website here.
