The Palazzo Cini Gallery in Venice inaugurates the 2017 exhibition season with a tribute to the contemporary: the spaces on the second floor welcome the exhibition of the well-known photographer Vik Muniz Afterglow "Pictures of Ruins". Tribute to Venice, born from a dialogue with the curator Luca Massimo Barbero, Director of the Institute of Art History of the Giorgio Cini Foundation, the exhibition includes unpublished photos inspired by the great masters of the Cini collection, such as Francesco Guardi, Dosso Dossi and Canaletto, a series dedicated to Piranesi's Invention Prisons and a special glass sculpture. Thanks to Assicurazioni Generali, the Gallery's main partner since its reopening in 2014 and an institutional supporter of the Cini Foundation for many years, the exhibition season will be open to the public until 15 November 2017.
Inspired by the exhibition Rediscovered Masterpieces from the Vittorio Cini collection – hosted in 2016 on the second floor of the Palazzo – by the Italian caprice and the Venetian tradition, the contemporary artist Vik Muniz presents in the exhibition Afterglow: Pictures of Ruins works created from scratch in an extraordinarily vivid chromatic scale, drawing on paintings from the Vittorio Cini collection and thus placing themselves in an ideal dialogue with the works exhibited in the Gallery.
The tradition of the architectural capriccio, which combines real and imagined buildings, archaeological ruins and a variety of other architectural elements combined in a creative and imaginative way, became a real phenomenon in XNUMXth and XNUMXth century Italian painting that was highly appreciated, shared and valued. Muniz revisits this theme in a contemporary key, simulating the brushstrokes of these paintings with clippings of paintings reproduced in art history volumes carefully selected not only for their chromatic values but also for the images they contain, which glued together recall a tactile surface , dough. Continuing the tradition of the artists of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Muniz creatively recombines these elements by reconstructing new images which, through a game of references and quotations, intrigue the viewer.
There are 9 works on display Afterglow: Pictures of Ruins of medium and large dimensions, these are Digital C prints in 1/6 edition that welcome the visitor, transforming him into a spectator while a true "capriccio" of color and expressive power goes on stage. Images that prevent you from approaching the work itself, as if it wants to blend into a show beyond the visual perception itself.
Lastly, the artist presents again the series of 8 works “Piranesi's Invention Prisons”, created in 2002 which will be accompanied by an original print by Piranesi belonging to the collection of the Giorgio Cini Foundation.
Vik Muniz was born in São Paulo, Brazil, in 1961 and currently lives between New York City and Rio de Janeiro. He has held exhibitions at extremely prestigious institutions such as the International Center of Photography in New York, the Museu de Arte Moderna in São Paulo, the Museu de Arte Moderna in Rio de Janeiro, the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, the Fundació Joan Miró in Barcelona, the Menil Collection in Houston, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Rome and the Irish Museum of Contemporary Art in Dublin. His works are also exhibited in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Museu de Arte Moderna in São Paulo, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Tokyo, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, the Tate Gallery in London, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis and the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. In 2001 Muniz represented the Brazilian Pavilion at the XNUMXth Venice Biennale.
Vik Muniz was the protagonist of an Oscar-nominated documentary entitled Waste Land (2010), which reconstructs the history of the artist's collaborations with a group of catadores (who survive by collecting and sorting waste) from the Jardim Gramacho district of the Brazilian city of Duque de Caxias north of Rio de Janeiro, the site of one of the largest landfills in the world. Muniz worked for three years with the catadores, using the recyclable waste they collected to create monumental portraits of these marginalized individuals that revealed their dignity and desperation, referring to the ancient masterpieces of the Masters.
Muniz was also named a UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador for his contributions to education and social development, especially his work with the catadores.
The exhibition also represents a great opportunity for the collecting of this artist, known throughout the world, but perhaps not considered as he deserves by the art market. His works have been re-evaluated over time with a constant progression without ever reaching important values on a par with other contemporary artists. It is probably this exclusive way of representing his technique that, having no comparison with others, becomes unique and more difficult to evaluate.
Muniz is also an artist of undoubted knowledge of the history of art, we recall another series of 2006 "After Monet" with works dedicated to the great impressionist master, also Digital C print 1/6 copies, all works now present in public collections and private.
It is to be expected that this Venetian passage is the key to understanding the start of a new period of great market success, because the works in the "Afterglow" collection are truly a show that one cannot fail to participate in.
