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Biography

Vik Muniz (born 1961) is a Brazilian born, New York based artist who experiments with media. His works are fleeting and consist of objects arranged to make an image, he then photographs the arrangement resulting in the final piece. Since the mid-1990s, Muniz has been incorporating everyday objects into his photographic process to create witty, bold, and often deceiving images based on photojournalism and art history. The artist makes pictures from dirt, diamonds, sugar, wire, string, chocolate syrup, peanut butter, dust, ketchup, the circular paper remnants made by hole punches, junk, pigment, and other materials. Though Muniz's images are often familiar—borrowing from popular culture and Old Master artists—it is quickly evident that they are not what they seem. Using an approach that the artist calls "the worst possible illusion," the works are formed from materials gathered from everyday life, which Muniz arranges and photographs, rather than traditional artistic materials.