Vik Muniz

Vik is one of those artists who tries and experiments with a lot of different types of art. The one I find most out of the ordinary is the photographs of junk. The really cool thing I find about the majority of his work is the amount of color that you find in trash. There aren't only colors you would affiliate with garbage, the color brown comes to mind. Rather there are large explosions of color through the random pieces scattered through the maze of garbage he creates. I also like the idea of taking something no one cares about and turning it into something remarkable.

"Sisyphus After Titian" Vik Muniz, 2006

One thing I really should mention about his work is that he not only performs through the medium of trash and generic garbage, but he also recreates classic paintings and other older works of art. Following this trend, he names his pieces after the old ones but adds "pictures of junk" after so as to not impersonate people like Monet. Granted, I will say that the execution is a little off because there aren't many ways to create the effects of shading through the material he used but I still would say that the images he creates are awfully two-dimensional in comparison to other art being created. 

Vik Muniz, 2008

This is another example of him turning trash into treasure. Not only do these small children's toys allow for him to create a much more believable portrait because of the size of the toys. With the previous picture, you would often run into big blocks of color whereas in this, the toys act as an almost pixel-like item that allows for full control of the form that the toys take. Given that this medium is still very restricting in comparison to other mediums, i find that the execution of this piece is phenomenal.