Alchemist of photography; Brazilian Vik Muniz challenges the viewer with his photographic art: images of portraits made with sugar, or sculptures made with chocolate - Style of Life: Art

"I ALWAYS THINK OF IMAGES AS MACHINES. Mine are like iMacs--it is possible to see how they are built," says Brazilian photographic artist Vik Muniz, professing to a transparency that is deceptive. Like his images, Muniz's sentences seem simple, casual, harmless. But suddenly a word or a gesture, out of the blue, hints at multiple readings, complex ideas and tricks--even though, in an almost theatrical way, Muniz warns, "I am not an illusionist, but a rather twisted realist. I don't know how to fool people, but I know how to bring forth the measure of their own illusions."

Muniz could easily be describing one of his first works, the ambiguous Two Nails, a photograph in which a photograph of a nail hangs from a nail. It is ingenious, and for a second dimensions get confused. The perplexed viewer smiles when he sees how simple and efficient the deception is.

Two Nails is one of the 180 pieces in a retrospective exhibition of Muniz's work, Ver para crer (Seeing is Believing), which is traveling through several Brazilian cities. During the show, Muniz--who until recently was not well-known in his own country--spoke about his search for new ways of showing and perceiving the image. "I work with slow images, as compared to, for instance, television," he says. "I am interested in finding out--how far can one be captured by an illusion, even if only for a second? Because afterwards everybody asks themselves, 'How did I let myself be fooled like that?'"

At first sight, a Muniz art production seems chaotic. Yet, change your angle, and a reading of the work of this citizen of Sao Paulo shows his obsessions, approached with audacity and originality

Arguably his most famous series is Sugar Children, a group of portraits of children who work in the cane plantations of Central America, one of many Muniz projects involving children. Muniz drew the portraits with sugar and other perishable materials, and then photographed them. These photographs, together with others--such as those of his chocolate sculptures, and his Aftermath portrait series of street children, made with carnival refuse like shredded paper--make up another retrospective, exhibited at Recife's Museu de Arte Moderna.

Simultaneously shown with the opening of Ver para Crer in Brazil, the works of Sao Paulo-born Muniz were one of the pillars of Brazilian art at the Venice Biennial, together with an offering by Ernesto Neto from Rio de Janeiro. From his country's exhibition, Muniz captured international attention with two new series: Pictures of Colors and Pictures of Air, where he again depicts his interest in the relationship between perception and reality.

We recently interviewed Muniz in his studio in Sao Paulo, and came away with following.

Several of your works deal with some kind of humor. Do you think humor is essential in art?

I do not think it is essential, but I do think it is a powerful strategy Illusion takes place when you are working with a visual structure that the viewer has learned since he or she was born. Humor is different. You build an immediate, linguistic structure, and then you take out an important element, which makes it all collapse.

This retrospective has already been shown in the US and will go to several cities in Brazil. Are you demanding about how your work is exhibited?

Not at all. On the contrary I offer some instructions as guidelines--for instance, when I know that a certain image needs to be watched from a certain distance. But generally I am nicely surprised when I see the results.

Do you notice any differences in the way your work is received in different countries?

Of course. I think that one of the most important things for an artist is to have people see his work, and find out what his work does to the people who are watching it. So far I have held exhibitions in Europe, the United States and Latin America. If I had to define myself I would largely consider myself a US artist, since I developed most of my work in the United States. But I am Brazilian, and that affects the way I digest European and American influences.

I believe my generation was especially affected by having grown up in times of political repression. Generally, Latin Americans are able to say things with more than one meaning. A great deal of my work plays with those appearances, with things representing other things. There is a feeling of satisfaction when one recognizes something when looking at an image. I have learned to search for things that are there without being evident.

How do you see your own work?

I do not like to be surrounded by my own work, because I think that makes me become self-reflecting, and that scares me. I am very egocentrical--well, I am an artist and I have to understand how I work. I am one way in the morning and a completely different person in the afternoon, but I pay attention because it is possible to organize creativity in a way that makes it steady It is a job, and a very hard one. If, besides that, I were surrounded by my own work, I think it would be too much. I don't even like mirrors. I collect images from the nineteenth century, and photographs of drawings. In fact I collect everything that I had wanted to do. The works of other artists--as opposed to mine--are inspiring for me. Especially those by dead artists.

What else inspires you?

Toy stores, TV cooking shows, TV carpentry shows... I can't stop watching them because they generate an idea of continuity... Although that is why the remote control was invented, as an antidote for that. I like to watch television. I am interested in finding out what everybody is watching. I also like machines, cars, but they take too much space. I am also inspired by slapstick comedy, because it is extremely mechanical.

Would you say that your work is, to a certain extent, political?

I don't think political art is born as political art, but I cannot control it. It happened to me with the Sugar Children series. It was received as a political opinion. It is a pity that labels condition the way things are seen, but it is also inevitable.

What is the first object you have a memory of?

A lollipop (laughs)... I really remember it, it was blue.

Do you remember the first thing you ever built?

No, but I do remember the first thing I destroyed. I had been given a tool set. I was three-and-a-half years old. I sawed off a leg of a table, It didn't look like a table anymore. Was it still a table? That's a philosophical question. Is a chair turned upside down still a chair?

Muniz thinks for a moment, head low When he looks up again, his gaze is fixed on a distant point in the ball. "Once I saw the truth," he says. "I was walking through a park and there was a magician, completely drunk, surrounded by kids. He was trying to perform his tricks but he stumbled and showed all the secrets of his movements. The children pointed at him and laughed at him. They no longer believed in his magic. It was a scene of an infinite sadness."

COPYRIGHT 2002 Americas Publishing Group
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