Well known for creating what he refers to as “photographic delusions,” Vik Muniz works with a wide array of eccentric materials such as chocolate, caviar, dust, diamonds, dirt and spaghetti sauce to create three dimensional images which he then captures with his camera. The present lot hails from his Pictures of Dust series in which he scoured the archives and files of the Whitney Museum of American Art selecting compelling installation photographs from past exhibitions and rendering them with dust he collected from the museum’s vacuum cleaners. The minimalist exhibition image portrayed in the present lot depicts works by Donald Judd and Richard Serra which were displayed in the Whitney’s “50th Anniversary Gifts and Promised Gifts" in 1980. Muniz selected man-made, spare, structurally rigid, minimalist pieces and portrayed them in the finest and most transient of materials. Muniz juxtaposes sturdy, structural forms with soft, fine, naturally occurring particles, exhibiting the tension that exists between order and chaos.
Brent Sikkema, New York
Private Collection, New York
Private Collection, Buenos Aires
New York, Whitney Museum of American Art, The Things Themselves: Pictures of Dust by Vik Muniz, January 27 - May 20, 2001 (another example exhibited)
Pedro Corrêa do Lago, ed., Vik Muniz: Obra Completa 1987-2009, Rio de Janeiro, 2009, p. 392 (another example illustrated)