“The really magical things are the ones that happen right in front of you. A lot of the time you keep looking for beauty, but it is already there. And if you look with a bit more intention, you see it.” VIK MUNIZ

Many of us have some visual connotation of Picasso’s sensual painting The Dream dating from 1932, portraying Marie-Thérèse Walter, Picasso’s muse and lover. It is Vik Muniz’s own personal visual memory which inspires Brazilian contemporary artist Vik Muniz to reconstruct and confront us with his unique appropriated version of this iconic painting.
Via the series, Pictures of Pigment, Muniz creates his own composition of The Dream by meticulously mounting layers of brilliant pigment powder onto a fat surface. Using little spoons and brushes, Muniz succeeds in evenly distributing the powder onto the surface, a painstaking process which may take weeks. Upon completion, the fleeting work will be photographed and thereafter destroyed. Whilst the photographic image is the conclusion of this artistic process, it is the creation of the physical object and the conceptual context that is at the heart of Muniz’s multi-disciplinary practice.
Viewed from a distance, the resemblance of his composition of The Dream to the original painting is striking. Muniz playfully and ironically enacts different roles becoming a sculptor, painter, photographer and theorist. His choice of subject matter is to purposely invite us to investigate the reconstructed image with the hope of renewing our complacent vision and allowing us to see afresh an image that we once took for granted.
Muniz’s work inspires in us an impression of sensuality and ambiguity and at the same time questions the very process of visual perception.