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Vik Muniz and Carlos da Silva Assunção Filho aka Cafi

Cover to Cover

www.VikMuniz.net Sikkema Jenkins & Co.

Vik Muniz is an artist who lives and works in Brooklyn and Rio de Janeiro. His 2006 retrospective, Vik Muniz: Reflex, has shown at museums in the United States, Canada, Mexico, and Brazil. Vik Muniz: Complete Works: 1987-2009, a midcareer catalogue raisonné, was published in December 2009, and Waste Land, a documentary about Muniz and Brazilian garbage recyclers, will be screened in 2010 at the Sundance and Berlin Film Festivals.

Cafi is a photographer who lives and works in Rio de Janeiro. Since the 1970s he has created over 250 album covers, produced numerous photo essays documenting Brazilian cultural traditions, and exhibited in national and international exhibitions.

Cover to Cover

For many people, record sleeves have the capacity to trigger memories and convey emotion in the most personal way, making them significant not only as tangible objects, but for some, as a first site of direct engagement with visual art. With this in mind, 10 artists - six individuals and two duos - were asked to create a conceptual artwork by selecting twenty LP records based on the album-cover visuals. In the "Cover to Cover" installation, eight crates containing the eight groups of albums create an interactive work of art that visitors can thumb through and play on nearby turntables. The artists were asked to deliver the records to the museum, making these not rare-album wish lists but works created by making selections from what was readily available. Thus, through their choices, each artist communicates a message or tells a visual story that speaks to the unique expressive impact of the 12-inch album cover.

Photo of Vik Muniz by Holger Keifel