Vik Muniz, whose book Reflex: A Vik Muniz Primer was published by Aperture in 2005, is the subject of a new documentary directed by filmmaker Lucy Walker. The new film titled: Wasteland follows Muniz as he embarks on an ambitious and moving project in his Native Brazil, traveling from Brooklyn where he currently resides to the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro, home of the world’s largest garbage dump Jardim Gramacho. Collaborating with Catadores: workers who comb the dump for recyclable materials, Muniz constructs images from the garbage itself, transforming the materials being worked with while promoting wider awareness around issues surrounding waste, the ways landfills affect surrounding communities and reminding us all the potential power and impact of art. Wasteland opens in New York this Friday at the Angelika Film Center.

Wasteland
Opens in New York Friday, October 29th, 2010

Angelika Film Center
18 W. Houston Street
New York, New York

Click here to purchase Vik Muniz’sReflex: A Vik Muniz Primer

Now on view in Zürich are the latest works by contemporary artist Vik Muniz in an exhibition appropriately titled Pictures of Garbage. Muniz creates large scale replications of iconic Western images using refuse, food, dust, and more,and then photographing them from a distance before destroying the production and leaving only the photograph as the artwork. This labor intensive process abstracts the original images and creates a whole new platform for these icons to be considered, like the Mother and Child pictured above.

Aperture published Muniz’s monograph, Reflex: A Vik Muniz Primer in 2005, which gives insight to the artist’s modus operandi and much of his earlier work. Utilizing his art for a philanthropic cause, Muniz will be donating all of the proceeds from the sales of his larger prints to the Garbage Pickers Association of Jardim Gramacho. Serving as the resource for this series, Jardim Gramacho is the largest dump in Latin America and a major resource for many people. This organization was founded to support the 5,000 workers and their families whose lives are about to be dramatically affected by the imminent closure of the dump. Also part of the exhibition is work from a series titled Pictures of Paper (2008) which creates the illusion of classic photographs from artists like Dorothea Lange, Edward Weston, and others through layers of black, white and gray papers.

Vik Muniz: Pictures of Garbage
Friday, April 3–Saturday, June 20. 2009

Arndt & Partner – Zürich
Lessingstrasse 5
CH-8002 Zurich
Switzerland