Born in 1961, São Paulo, Brazil
Lives and works in New York City

Vik Muniz at Brent Sikkema
It's almost disingenuous to call Vik Muniz's work photography, because most of it develops from a three-dimensional set-up, which is then photographed. In one series represented in this recent show, Muniz, a New York-based artist who studied advertising in his native Brazil, created landscape sculptures by accumulating black thread, which he coaxed, wheedled and hairsprayed into place. After photographing one, he would use the same thread to create the next image thereby destroying the next image, thereby destroying the previous sculptural version. The actual sculptures were much larger than the photographic images (which are under a foot square) and only presented an identifiable image from one perspective. Muniz uses the camera to capture this unique viewpoint. 6,000 yards (lighthouse) is a realistic view of a beach, two nearby mesas framing a distant island with a lighthouse. The yardage of the title refers not to the distance between viewer and subject, but to the length of thread used to create the sculpture.
In another series, Muniz created wire sculptures of daisies, a faucet, a closed suitcase with some clothes sticking out, and a bird cage, which he then photographed. There is wit to Muniz's imagery (one wire piece, Hole, depicts a hole in the ground with a ladder poking out of it), but the humor is dry; it does not destroy the delicate balance of effects. The best of life, a portfolio of 10 silver gelatin photographs of drawings by Muniz, examines the component of memory in what we know Muniz drew, from memory, images from famous journalistic photographs such as one might find in Life magazine - the people in a theater wearing 3-D glasses, the sailor kissing the nurse on V-J day, the child victims of napalm in Vietnam. while every image is instantly recognizable, Muniz pits his memory of the originals against the viewer's. In his most recent works, Muniz made drawings in sand on the beach, which he photographed. One shows a dog looking over a hill, while another, Breezy point, Saturday, January 28, 1995, 3:00 p.m., is a splendid depiction of a woman seated at a table, eating something from a large bowl. Muniz's facility with so many different materials is dazzling, and the concept - the gaps between perception and reality - is subtly expressed. Like Zeno, who said that the arrow in flight is at each instant still, Vik Muniz possesses a flair for paradox; he is a most unsettling humorist.
Text by: Vincent Katz, ART IN AMERICA - December 1995


Mixing humor with the history of photography
The fuzzy border between photography and drawing continues to attract the attention of Vik Muniz, a Brazilian artist who lives in New York. For three works here, Mr. Muniz constructed elaborate landscapes out of tangles of string and photographed them; other images, featuring wire renderings of a bird cafe, water spilling from a faucet and a cluster of daisies in a jar, recall Alexander Calder's wire drawings. Other pieces make humorous references to the history of photography. Alfred Stieglitz's famous cloud photographs are sent up by an image of a cloud made out of cotton puffs that resembles Durer's drawing of praying hands, and shadow figures of a dog and a rabbit are cast by hands that are themselves rendered shadowy by an X-ray machine.
The outlines of famous paintings are carved in the sand of a beach, and an origami rhinoceros is photographed in light and shadow, what all this adds up to is never clear, but Mr. Muniz's considerable wit is everywhere apparent in these smart and provocative images.
Text by: Charles Hagen, THE NEW YORK TIMES Art in Review, Friday, March 24th, 1995.


Vik Muniz:
This sly conceptual artist shows a group of trompe l'oeil pictures as playful as they are smart. An origami rhino, a cotton-ball cloud, X-rayed hand gestures, and "drawings" in wire, sand and 18,000 yards of black thread tease perception, representation, craft-making, and the grateful viewer.

Vik Muniz: ''Individuals" is a series of unique platinum prints of plasticine sculptures (abstract portraits) that the artist destroyed after capturing them with a camera, plus a few "group portraits" of the sculptural forms. The silvery in-and -out focus images seem to dissolve as you look at them. Empty bases echo the theme of absence.
THE VILLAGE VOICE - February 16, 1993


The Encompassing eye: Photography as Drawing
"The Encompassing Eye: Photography as Drawing begins from a historical fact: that photography at its inception was seen by many observers as a particular, almost magical kind of drawing.
This is expressed most famously in William Henry Fox Talbot's description of the events that led him to discover his photographic process, when he grew dissatisfied with his inept attempts to draw scenes around Lake Como, during a visit there in 1833. As a result, he writes, he returned home to England resolved to perfect a means of recording the "fairy images" of the camera obscura in a permanent way.
As Weston Naef writes in his essay"Daguerre, Talbot, and the Crucible of drawing" (page 10), early commentators, with no exact models to compare the new medium to, returned consistently to the closest parallel to it they could think of - drawing. Again, Talbot himself provides the best evidence of this, referring to the first results of his process as "photogenic drawings" and giving his pioneering exploration of the characteristics of the new medium the title The pencil of Nature.
That terms from drawing should be used to describe photography in this way is not surprising. As Naef further points out, drawing occupied an important place in the training and practice of artists in the early nineteenth century. Moreover, the ability to draw was seen as an essential skill for cultured people of the time - which was no doubt added to Fox Talbot's frustration at his own lack of abilities in this direction. But in a larger sense, this early confusion over how to describe photographs prefigured a more essential debate that continues today, over just what photography is - or, as the debate is more often presented, what it should be. The definition of photography has always been a matter of critical argument and struggle, reflecting continuing uncertainty about the nature and most appropriate use of the medium.
One side of this debate over the capabilities and proper use of the medium was exemplified by the painter sir William Newton, who argued in 1853 that "the general tone of nature has yet to be accomplished by means of photography". I do not conceive it to be necessary or desirable," Newton continued, "for an artist to represent or aim at the attainment of every minute detail, but to endeavor at producing a broad and general effect....." To achieve this end, Newton proposed a controversial step:" I have found in many instances that the object is better obtained by the whole subject being a little out of focus, thereby giving a greater breadth of effect, and consequently more suggestive of the true character of nature"
The other side of the debate over the nature of the medium was articulated in 1857 by Lady Elizabeth Eastlake, in a famous essay in the Quarterly review. Describing Nicephore Niepce's discovery of the process of developing a latent image, Eastlake wrote of".......the high philosophic principle, since then universally adopted in photographic practice, which put faith before sight - the conviction of what must be before the appearance of what is." The trust in the machine that this phrase implies - in the images provided by the apparatus over one's own vision - is another way of expressing one side in the long-standing opposition between science and art, fact and expression. in arguing for reliance on the images provided by science and technology Eastlake reflected the self-doubt of modern industrial culture, and its continuing attempts to locate a standard of certainty outside itself.
The definition of photography has always been a matter of critical argument and struggle, reflecting continuing uncertainty about the nature and most appropriate use of the medium.
Photography, Eastlake declared further "is made for the present age, in which the desire for art resides in a small minority, but the craving, or rather the necessity for cheap, prompt, and correct facts in the public at large. " Photography's business, she continued, "is to give evidence of facts, as minutely and as impartially as, to our shame, only and unreasoning machine can give." Eastlake described the essential character of art in very different terms, linking it to the will of the artist rather than the apparent certainties of the machine. "Whatever appertains to the free-will of the intelligent being", she declared, "as opposed to the obedience of the machine, - this, and much more than this, constitutes that mystery called Art......"
While this debate continued in photographic circles, photography quickly became established in the popular mind as a medium with a special link to reality. Its capabilities as a order of the day, ''he noted. Foreshadowing what would become a central premise of Modernist criticism, Hartmann argued that "Surely every medium of artistic expression has its limitations.......The whole pictorial effect of a photographic print should be gained by photographic technique, pure and simple". A decade later Paul Strand furthered this implicit call for trusting the machine and camera vision. In a famous Modernist credo Strand wrote that "photography......finds its raison d'etre, like all media, in a complete uniqueness of means. This is an absolute unqualified objectivity....The full potential power of every medium is dependentupon the purity of its use".
To consider photography as a form of drawing is to recognize it as a picture-making medium much like any other. This involves a profound shift in the expectations one usually brings to photography. In Europe, though, Modernism took different forms. In the 1920's a host of artists turned to photography, finding in it a means not simply of recording and reinscribing reality, but of transforming it. For these artists photography was simply another picture-making medium, although one with a special status in society. taken in these terms, photography could be used not simply to represent reality but to suggest new realities. Through solarized images and photograms, Man Ray and other Surrealists could suggest dream states that transcended the physical limitations of the world. To this end Man Ray did not share Strand's concern with respecting the specific characteristics of photography. In fact, he declared in 1934 that "a certain amount of contempt for the material employed to express and idea is indispensable to the purest realization of that idea."
For the Constructivists, too, the opportunities photography offered of depicting the world in a new way were more important that a programmatic adherence to a given definition of the medium.. For Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, who extended the ideas of constructivism in his teaching at the Bauhaus (and later at Chicago's Instate of Design), photography could be a means of changing reality by seeing it in a new way. the photograph became the first step in a process of transformation that would end with the transformation of human consciousness. "Thanks to the photographer", Moholy wrote, "humanity has acquired the power of perceiving its surroundings, and its very existence, with new eyes".
The radical transformation of photography these and other photographers of the time undertook paralleled a broader development within Modernism by which the expressive possibilities of abstraction were recognized. Photographers, like painters and sculptors, came to accept that even if there pictures were purged of referential meaning, the qualities of line, shape, tone, and space could themselves carry meaning. In the popular consciousness photography and drawing- the one an art of the machine, the other an art of the hand - remain radically different. But he Modernists, in recognizing the inherent meaning of photography's formal qualities, in a sense acknowledged its familial connection to the rest of art. In the process, the deep links between photography and drawing - formal, functional, and conceptual - could once again be recognized genre of drawing in which an artist records the human body while exploring formal properties. Photographing himself in strange poses and at odd angles, Coplans abstracts the familiar shapes of the body to suggest unknown creatures of the mind, or to play off the forms of classical art. Jan Groover works with the genre of still life, arranging various small items - a stature of a baseball player, a hammer, a squash - into catalogues that recall the startling conjunctions of Surrealism. By photographing these tableaus using selective focus, playing off areas of sharp detail and vague shape, Groover explores the nature of photographic attention. Los Angeles artist Judy Fiskin uses photographs to record various objects - pieces of furniture, or tract houses - in order to recognize the unity of form within these groups. Pursuing this task of cataloguing in much less systematic way than Bernd and Hilla Becher, and with less distancing irony than Ed Ruscha, Fiskin presents her images as small prints, like pages from an intimate sketchbook.
A number of contemporary artists deliberately explore the confusions between drawing and photography, in work that has a strong epistemological dimension. As Rosalind Krauss has pointed out, "the question "what is it?" is central to many people's understanding of photographs. Beyond simply identifying the objects depicted in a photograph, through, we need to ask the additional question, "How is it made?" In this regard the technical information often supplied in camera magazines serves as a kind of second caption, anchoring the method of representation used in making the picture in much the same way that a descriptive caption anchors the events depicted.
In Zeke Berman's often puzzling photographs, line and shape are embedded in a representational fabric, fleshed out with detail. Berman confounds drawing and photography, setting up visual conundrums in which the familiar laws of the physical world are contradicted within the imaginary space of the photograph. James Casebere, on the other hand, uses the rich chiaroscuro tones of photography in his images of featureless white models of generic scenes - a "Mexican" village, a kitchen counter in a suburban home. Dramatically lit and photographed, then presented as prints or as large light boxes, these scenes take on an unreal air, an effect that depends in part on Casebere's rejection of photographic detail and the unnaturally smooth gradations of tone that result.
Finally, the Brazilian-born artist Vik Muniz draws what he calls "iconic images" from news photography, working not directly from the photograph but from his memory of the image. In doing so he addresses the pervasive nature of mass media imagery, in which the authority of the photograph is given even greater power by virtue of its having been so widely distributed. It thus becomes not only a record of an event, but the event itself - the signifier separated from the signified, free-floating, archetypal.
To consider photography as a form of drawing is essentially to recognize it as a picture-making medium much like any other, This involves a profound shift in the expectations one usually brings to photography. The images it produces can no longer be seen as somehow privileged in their relationship to reality: instead they must be recognized as pictures, though of a certain historically and culturally defined sort. (By the same token, one could consider drawing as a form of photography. This wouldreverse the historical sequence of the two media, but acknowledge that they both reflect basic human instincts to depict and record - and imaginatively to transform - the world.)
The ongoing debate over the nature of photography - over the degree to which a photograph reflects the will of its maker, and how much credence to grant the information it provides - will only intensify as developing technology transforms its familiar modes. The evidentiary quality of the medium, which has relied on the mysteries of chemistry and optics, is being undercut by the growing tendency toward computerization of photography, allowing manipulation of the image to a greater degree than ever before. This process throws into relief the problematic and elusive nature of the medium. it also emphasizes the role of human intention as the ultimate yardstick of meaning and purpose, not only in photography but in any human activity.

Text by: Charles Hagen, APERTURE, Number One Hundred twenty-Five, Fall 1991


Serie "Equivalent"
I just compiled a portfolio of ten photographs taken of the marble floors of the Museum of Modern Art in NYC that look just like Stieglitz Equivalents. I had the idea while looking at Stieglitz' Lake George Pictures, Then I went to the museum shop, bought some construction paper for the props and with the help of a flashlight and a dime painted with white-out I took these "pictorialist" scenes from the beautiful forms everyone steps on but hardly notices.
Starting in 1993, these works were the my first attempts to create images that pocess multiple visual meanings and antagonistic biases of representation. Playing with Alfred Stieglitz notorious concept of equivalence, I fashioned these low-tech cloud-cotton-representations in a way that kept the meaning of the image circulating continuously among its formal readings.
The Equivalents were shown first time at Tricia Collins' Grand Salon and a total of 14 images were part of the exhibition.
Other "equivalents" include a snail, praying hands, a tea pot, a cat and so on.


Serie "The Best of Life"
"The Best of LIFE" was the first book I bought in the US. I discovered it in a garage sale North of Chicago and the simple scanning of its pages gave me an incredible sensation of "belonging" that I was much in need then. This sensation gradually increased when I started to notice the book to be a common household item. But, why would people insist in having a collection of images that they practically knew by heart? And why would these images be the subject of constant consultation? The answered was that its proud owners would sometimes place it right next to their family albums and regard those ubiquitous universal images as something intrinsically personal.
"The Best of LIFE" is the family album of "the family of man". a Psychological sampler of modern history, a time map.
These Pulitzer-prize-winner images, although etched in the collective memory of millions of people, were not experienced even by the photographer who took them. The only sensible thing exposed to these immortal moments was the greedy film that captured them.
I tried for years to work with these images, but they were so loaded with meaning that it was virtually impossible to add or subtract anything to them. In the summer of 89, Seven years after the purchase of the book, I forgot it on the beach. I tried to find it with a flash-light for a good two hours and then went back to the house I was staying. Felling that I had lost my link with humanity I instinctively started to test how much I remembered of those images. For months I had practiced to draw them but, never without the photographic reference in front of me. The results were at first a bit discouraging but with time they became a continuous source of self-discovery.
Everyday, based on the accumulated efforts, I would remember something new and when I didn't, I would call a friend that did not have access to the image and test their memory of the given image. The process itself taught me to edit the possible from the impossible images (I never finished Lee Harvey Oswald) and once these drawings reached a satisfactory resemblance to the real event, I photographed them and printed them with the same Duo-tone screen in which they were first seen.
It is said that De Kooning could no longer recognize his former dentist, but still asked him to do his portrait. After executing the drawing in the most abstract fashion he gazed at the paper for a moment and then said to his model : You know, you look very much like my dentist.
When people first saw these images, they were sure to know what they were looking at, but, the personal connections between them and these omnipresent images seemed to have been broken. These images had made a voyage backwards to where they had come from, they had been biased, personalized in accordance to one's own set of tools to understand and relate to them. They were my own universal images. According to Aristotle, A work of art reproduces its original not as it is in itself, but as it appears to the senses. Art addresses itself not to the abstract reason but to sensibility and the image making faculty. I had finally turned the "reality" of reference into art by simply reproducing it by my own means; by doing so I not only could gauge my relationship to the original event, but also create another event that like a vaccine will change its original function; it will not inform, it will show you information itself in its most distilled form.
Vik Muniz 1995

1996 "Rena Branstein Gallery, San Francisco CA
1995 "The Wire Pictures" Galeria Camargo Vilaça, São Paulo , Brazil
1995 "Representations" Wooster Gardens, New York, NY
1994 Galeria Claudio Botello, Turin, Italy
1993 "Equivalents" Grand Salon NYC
1993 "Equivalents" PontePietra Gallery, Verona, Italy
1993 "Individulals" Stux Gallery, New York, NY
1992 Gallerie Beaumont, Luxembourg
1992 Claudio Botetello Arte, Turin, Italy
1991 Gabinete De Arte Rachel Arnaud, Sao Paulo, Brazil
1991 Galerie Claudine Papillon, Paris, France
1991 Galeria Berini, Barcelona, Spain
1991 "The Best of LIFE," Stux Gallery , New York, NY
1991 Kicken- Pausebach , Cologne Germany
1990 Stux Gallery, New York, NY
1990 Meyers/Bloom Gallery, Santa Monica, CA
1990 Stephen Wirtz Gallery, San Francisco, CA
1989 Stux Gallery, New York, NY
1988 Stux Gallery, New York, NY
1988 PS 122, New York, NY

1995 "A Drawing" Bravin Post Lee Gallery , NYC
1995 "Wheel of Fortune" Lombard/Fried Gallery. NYC
1995 "Group Show" Margareth Murray Fine Arts NYC
1995 "Changing Perspectives" Contemporary Art Museum, Houston TX
1995 "Panorama Da Arte Contmporanea Brasileira" Museu de Arte Moderna, São Paulo, Brazil. Curated by Ivo Mesquita.
1995 "Panorama Da Arte Contmporanea Brasileira" Museu de Arte Moderna, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Curated by Ivo Mesquita
1995 "Group Show" Steven Wirtz Gallery, San Francisco CA
1995 "Mostra America" Fundação Cultural de Curitiba. Curitiba Brazil
1995 "Recent Aquisitions" Los Angeles County Museum, Los Angelas CA
1995 "The Photographic Condition" San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA
1995 "The Cultured Tourist" Center For Photography At Woodstock , NY, Curated By Leslie Tonkonow
1995 "Blindspot"The MAC, Dallas Artist Research and Exhibition, Dallas, TX
1995 "Blue" Steven Wirtz Gallery , San Francisco CA
1995 "Nonsolofotografia" Galeria Ponte Pietra, Verona, Italy
1995 "Garbage" Thread Waxing Space, NYC
1994 "Single Cell Creatures", Katonah Museum of Art, Katonah, NY Curated by Thomas Zummer.
1994 "A Fistful of Flowers" Grand Salon, New York
1994 "Crash" The Thread Waxing Space, NYC
1994 "Across The River And Into The Woods" The Rushmore Festival At Woodbury NY , Curated by Collins And Milazzo.
1994 "Up the Stablishment: Reconstructing The Counterculture" Sonnabend Gallery, NYC. Curated by Dan Cameron.
1994 "Garbage"Real Art Ways, Harford CT. Curated by Ann Pasternak
1994 "Jetleg" Gallerie Martina Detterer, Frankfurt, Germany
1994 "Possible Things" Marcel Sitcoske, NY
1993 Wooster Gardens, New York, NY
1993 Tom Cugliani Gallery, New York, NY
1993 "Jours Tranquilles a Clichy," curated by Alain Kirili, Paris, France
1993 "Elvis Has Left the Building", curated by Collins & Milazzo, New York, NY
1993 "Hypercathexis: Layers of Exerience", Stux Gallery, New York, NY, curated by Nicolas Tobier
1993 "Jean-Francois Millet, A Dialogue", Phillpe Briet Gallery, New York , NY curated by Alan Jones.
1993 "Wasteland" Dooley Le Cappellaine Gallery, New York, NY, curated by Sergio Bessa
1993 "The Alternative Eye: Photography for the 90's" Southern Alleghenies Museum, Loreto, PA
1993 "Moving Shadows." Tennisport Arts, Long Island City, NY
1993 "Time to Time" Castello de Rivara, Torino, Italy, curated by Luca Beatrice
1993 "Sound" Museo D'Arte Moderna-Bolazano, Italy, curated by Mariza Vescovo
1993 "Post-Verbum" Pallazzo della Regione Bergamo, Italy. Curated by Mariza Vescovo
1993 "Re: Parceling Perception" Four Walls, New York, organized by Paul Dickerson
1992 "Selective passage", Jusse Segan, Paris France
1992 "Life Size: Small, Medium, Large.", Museo D'Arte Contemporaneo Luigi Pecci, Prato, Italy
1992 "Multiple Orgasm", Arena, New York
1992 "Multiples", The Alldrich Museum of Art, Ridgefield, CT
1992 "Diversite Latino Americaine", Gallery 1900/2000 , Paris, France "Detour" The International House, New York
1992 "The Collection" Centro per l'arte Contemporaneo Luigi Pecci. Prato Italy "Les Enfants Terribles", Wooster Gardens, NY
1992 International House, New York, NY
1992 "Oltrefoto," Museo Ken Damy di Fotografia Contemporanea, Provincia di Brescia, Italy
1992 Brent Sikkema Fine Arts, New York, NY
1992 "Gallery Artists," Galerie Claudine Papillon, Paris, France
1992 "Theoretically Yours," Regione Autonoma Della Valle D'Aosta, Aosta, Italy, curated by Collins & Milazzo
1991 "Dissimilar Identity", Scott Alan Gallery, New York, NY, curated by Berta Sichel and Antonio Alvarez.
1991 "Oltrfoto". Museo Ken Danny Di Fotografia Contemporanea, Provincia di Brescia, Italy
1991 "The-Art-Over-The-Sofa Exhibit" Boritzer/Gray Gallery Santa Monica, CA, curated by Jan Butterfield
1991 "Ornament", John Post Lee, New York, NY, curated by Fabian Marcaccio
1991 "Gallery Artists",: Galerie Claudine Papillon, Paris, France "Theoretically Yours", Aosta, Italy, curated by Collins and Milazzo
1991 "Mike Kelley/Vik Muniz/Jim Shaw," Real Art Ways, Hartford CT
1991 "SummerReview '91," Stux Gallery, New York, NY
1991 "Timely Objects with Ironic Tendencies," Rosa Esman Galley, New York
1991 "Summer Review" Stux Gallery, NYC
1991 "The Encomassing Eye, Photography as Drawing," University Art Galleries, University of Akron, Akron,OH, curated by Chuck Hagen Traveled
1991 "The Neighborhood," A.I.R., Amsterdam, The Netherlands, curated by Chistian Bastians.
1991 "Emil Lucas/Vik Muniz/Jim Hyde," Steve Mendelson Gallery, Pittsburg, PA
1991 "The New Low," Galeria Claudio Bottello, Torino, Italia
1991 "Anni Novanta," Galleria d'Arte Moderna, Comune di Bologna, Italia, curated by Renato Barilli and Pier Giovanni Castagnoli
1991 "Real Fake," Cartier Foundation, Jouy-en-Josos, France, curated by Jean Michel Ribbete
1991 "Framed," Stephen Wirtz Gallery, San Francisco, CA
1991 "Outside America," Fay Gold Gallery, Atlanta, GA, curated by Collins & Milazzo
1991 "The Fettish of Knowledge," Real Art Ways, Hartford, CT, curated by Jim Hyde
1990 "Stuttering," Stux Gallery, New York, NY
1990 "U.S.A. Annees 90," Galerie Antoine Candau, l'Espace-dieu, Paris,France
1990 "Non Sculpture," Galerie Barbara Farber, Amsterdam, The Nertherlands
1990 3rd International Biennale der Papierkunst 19, Leopold-Hoesch Museum,Duren, Germany
1990 "Total Metal," Simon Watson Gallery, New York, NY, curated by Richard Phillips
1990 "Functional Fantasy," TransAmerica Pyramid Lobby, San Francisco, CA
1990 "Constructed Illusion," Pace MacGill Gallery, New York,NY
1990 "Semi-Objects," John Good Gallery, New York, NY
1990 "All's Quiet on The Western Front," Espace Dieu, Galerie Antoine Candau, Paris, France
1990 "Framing Cartoons: In and out of context," Loughelton Gallery, New York, NY
1990 "Drawing." Althea Viafora, New York, NY
1990 "Assembled," Wright State University, Dayton, OH
1990 Baltimore Sales and Rental Gallery, Baltimore Museum, Baltimore, MD
1990 The Gallery, New York, NY
1990 "On the Edge Between Sculpture and photography," Cleveland Center for Contemporary Art, Cleveland, OH
1990 Fernando Alcolea, Barcelona, Spain
1990 "Frames of Reference," The Gallery, New York, NY
1989 "Fluxus and Friend, Emily Harvey Gallery, New York, NY
1989 "The Contemporary Triptych," Jamison/Thomas Gallery, New York, NY
1989 "The Last Laugh; Humor, Irony, Self-Mockery, & Derision," Massimo Audiello Gallery, New York, NY, curated by Collins & Milazzo.
1989 "Buena Vista," John Gibson Gallery, New York, NY, curated by Collins & Milazzo.
1989 "Frames of Reference." The Gallery, New York, NY
1989 "De Rozeboomkamer," Beeldenroute Foundation, Diepenheim, Holland, curated by Urbin Mulkers.
1989 "Obscured," Josh Baer Gallery, New York, NY, curated by Regina Joseph.
1989 Karl Bornstein Gallery, Santa Monica, CA
1989 Stux Gallery, New York, NY
1989 "Wortlaut: Konzepte Zwischen Visueller Poesie & Fluxus." Galerie Schuppenhauer, Cologne, West Germany
1989 Craig Cornelius Gallery, New York, NY
1988 "The New Proverty II," Meyers/Bloom Gallery, Santa Monica, CA, curated by Collins & Milazzo
1989 "Gravity and Blindness," PS 122, New York, NY (Two Person Exhibition)

The Metropolitan Museum Of Art
The Art Institute of Chicago
The Museum of Fine Arts Boston
The Los Angeles County Museum
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
MMA , Dallas TX
The Museum Of Fine Arts Houston TX
The Cartier Foundation France
Museo de Arte Luigi Pesce Prato Italy
Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
The Saachi Collection London England
Maison Europeene de La Photographie, Paris, France
Roseum Malmo Sweden
The Progressive Corporation

1995 "being There" Paolo Baldacci Gallery. nyc
1994 "Shooting Blind" Wesleyan University, Connecticut.
1993 "Medium Messages" Wooster Gardens, New York, NY
1992 "The Thing," Perry Rubenstein Gallery, New York, NY
1992 "Seven Women," Andrea Rosen Gallery, New York,NY
1990 "Stuttering." Stux Gallery, New York, NY
1989 "Fluxus Moment and Continuum," Stux Gallery, New York,NY

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" Across The River and Into The Trees" The Rushmore Festival Catalogue
"Theoretically Yours", Regione Autonoma della Valle d'Aosta, Assessorato Pubblica Istruzione, Exhibition catalogue, May 1992, Aosta, Italy.
Catalogue Essay: "Outside America". 1991 Fay Gold Gallery.
"From Kant to Kitsch and Back Again". TEMA CELESTE. January- February 1991. pp 76-80.
Catalogue Essay: "A L'ouest, Rien de Nouveau." February. 1990 Gallerie Antoine Candau.
"Double Talk. Precarity and Balance. Vik Muniz." TEMA CELESTE, October-December 1989. p.5
" Vik Muniz, The Wrong Logician" Exibition catalogue, October 1993 Grand Salon NYC and Ponte Pietra , Verona, Italy
Catalogue Essay: "Buena Vista." October 1989, John Gibson Gallery, New York.
Meyers/Bloom Gallery, Santa Monica, CA, December 1988.
"The Last Laugh" Exhibition Catalogue, Massimo Audiello Gallery, New York, January 1990
"Equivalents," Exhibition Catalogue, Grand Salon/Ponte Pietra Gallery, 1993
Catalogue Essay. "The Last Decade: American Artists of the 80's." Tony Shafrazi Gallery, New York, NY, September 15-October 27, 1990.
Cotter, Holland. "Three Shows Celebrate The Spirit of Fluxus" THE NEW YORK TIMES, October 23 , 1992, New York.
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Cyphers, Peggy. ARTS MAGAZINE, May 1990. p.112.
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Exhibition Booklet, November 1989, Los Angeles.
Fucuta, Brenda, "Vik Muniz". O Estado de Sao Paolo, August 6, 1991.
Vila, Guidita. "Vik Muniz alla Gallerisa Claudio Botello", SEGNO no. 115, June 1992. Italy
Hagen, Charles."Mixing Humor With the History of Photography" THE NEW YORK TIMES March 24 1995
"Vik Muniz," THE NEW YORK TIMES, February 5th, 1993.
" The Encompassing Eye; Photography as Drawing" APERTURE no 125 Fall 1992, New York
Huitorel, Jean-Marc. "Life Size", ART PRESS no. 173, October 1992, Paris, France.
Jacques, Alison Sarah. "Life Size" . Museo per l'arte contemporanea. Luigi Pecci, Exhibition catalogue, July 1992, Italy.
Jones, Alan. "Buena Vista," TEMA CELESTE. January-March 1990. p.63.
Jouannais, Jean Yves."Vik Muniz", Art Press,December 1991
Kahn, Wolf. "Connecting Incongruities". ART IN AMERICA. November 1992. pp.116-121.
Levin, Kim. "Choices," THE VILLAGE VOICE, April 2, 1991.
"Vik Muniz" In Brief/ THE VILLAGE VOICE, February 16, 1993.
Lieberman, Rhonda. "Stuttering," FLASH ART, April/May 1991.
"Traumatic Objects: Theres No Place Like Home," exhibition catalogue Gabinete De Arte Raquel Arnaud, Sao Paulo, Brazil, August 1991.
with Vik Muniz. "Other People's Pictures," FLASH ART, Fall 1991.
Lowery, Patricia. "Three at Mendelson,"PITTSBURGH PRESS,April 27, 1991.
Machado, Alvaro "Vik Muniz." A FOLHA DE SAO PAULO, August6, 1991.
Mahlow, Detrich. "Wortlaut: Konzepte Zwischen Visueller Poesie & Fluxus, "Exhibition Essay, Galerie Schuppenhauer, Cologne, West Germany, April 1989
Mahoney, Robert. "The Thing", ARTS, October 1991, p.95.
"Vik Muniz at Stux", ARTS MAGAZINE,January 1990.
"Semi-Objects".ARTS, March 1991.
Mammi, Alessandra. "Impara l'arte". L'ESPRESSO, July 19, 1992
McKenna, Kristina. "Vik Muniz at Meyers/Bloom." L.A. TIMES June 26, 1990.
Megale, Teresa. "Arteprima". L'UNITA,, July 10, 1992. Italy.
Melrod, George. "Vik Muniz, Stux Gallery, New York" SCULPTURE. November/December 1990.
Mesquita, Ivo. "Panorama da Arte Contemporanea Brazileira. November 1995 Museu de Arte Moderna, São Paulo, Brazil
Miller, Donald. "Art Review," PITTSBURG POST GAZETTE, April 13, 1991, p. 18.
Misan, Simona. "Vik Muniz", REVISTA GALERIA, November 1991
Morandoti, Lorento. "Life Size", LAPROVINCIA, July 3, 1992
Morgan, Stuart. "Vik Muniz At Prato." FRIEZE MAGAZINE, # 7 "individuals" Stux Gallery, New York NY 1992
Muniz, Vik. "Chemical Art, Digital Information" Jornal Da Tarde New Year's Edition 1995
"On Lying" Exhibition catalogue for "Making it real" an exhibition curated by Vik Muniz for ICI, with texts by Willian Mitchel and Luc Sante.
" The All American Woman" Catalogue Of Germaine Brooks The Grand Salon , February 1995
"The Death Of The Actor" New Observations March 1995
"The Waking Dream" Studio Voice #5 Tokyo Japan
"New Realities" Le Milenium, November/December 1995 Tokyo Japan
"Pygmalyon Maché", Dublin Museum Of Art, Ireland, Exibition Catalogue
"Angels Don't Fly Too Well in Photographs."Interview with Jeff Wall. Blindspot. Fall 1994.
" Vik Muniz Interviews Jeff Wall" Blindspot Fall 1994
" Unforgettable" Blindspot Spring 1994
"The Umbereable Likeness of Being" PARKETT Verlag 1994
"Public Mirrors" BLINDSPOT #2 October 1993
"Home Alone", Claudio Battello, Exhibition catalogue, April 1992, Turin Italy.
"Stuttering," Stux Gallery Catalogue, February 1992, New York.
"As time goes by" PARKETT, May 1993
"Stereo Where Available" BLINDSPOT, Spring 1993
Pasini, Francesca. "L"art d'Avanguardia in Short" IL SECOLO, July 31, 1992 Italy.
Perela, Christina. "Vik Muniz", TEMA CELESTE, Fall 1992, Italian edition
"Life Size", Museo per L'arte Contemperanea Luigi Pecci, Exhibition catalogue, July 1992. Italy
Pozzi, Giane. "Eco Como si cura l'arte" July 19, 1992. Italy. L'UNITA
Princenthal, Nancy. "Vik Muniz at Stux," ART IN AMERICA, April 1989, p.226
Roberts, Liisa. Expatriate art. How Brazilian is it? POLYESTER, Vol 2 #8
Rosenburg, Barry. Exhibition Catalogue: "Assembled,"April 1990. Cleveland Center for Contemporary Art.
Sanada, Ikkan. "Vik Muniz: New Progressive Artists in New York", BACK NUMBER,Japan. December 1989, p. 145
Shottenkirk, Dena. "Buena Vista," CONTEMPORANEA, March 1990. P92
Sichel, Berta. Vik Muniz At The Grand Salon, ART NEXUS January 1994.
Sundell, Margaret. 7 Days, February 21, 1990, p.54.
Tager, Alisa. "Detour", THE INTERNATIONAL HOUSE, Exhibition catalogue, May1992, New York
Tempestini, Ricardo. "Life Size" IL TIRRENO, July 11, 1992 July 17, 1992.
Terragni, Emilia. "Life Size", Museo d'Arte Contemporanea, Luigi Pecci. Exhibition catalogue, September 1992, Italy
THE COLLECTION,Museo d'Arte Contemoranea, Luigi Pecci. Exhibition catalogue, September 1992, Italy.
Vescovo, Marisa. "Vik Muniz a Turino". LA STAMPA, April 27, 1992 Italy.
Post Verbum, Tema Celeste, June 1993
Sound, Forme e Colore Del Suono, Exibition catalogue, Museum Fur Modern Kunst- Bozen 1993
Wilson, Beth. Catalogue Essay, October 1989, Stux Gallery, New York.
Wright, Jeffrey. "Vik Muniz" COVER

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