Vik Muniz's Rebus at Moma

In the exhibition “Artist’s Choice + Vik Muniz = Rebus,” Muniz scoured the vast collections of the MoMa to bring together diverse media into a visual thesis that activates the viewer. The show actually felt like it had a point of view, a strong point of view, unlike some other shows that the MoMa puts together that feel extremely corporate and sanitized. The premise of the show is a rebus, which playfully uses images to represent words. This acts as an interesting parallel to the way that we decipher art images—by translating them into corresponding representational words in our minds. However, Muniz constantly brings us precariously close to words, and then pulls us back into the purely visual.

The show begins with a video of an interconnected series of chain reactions by Peter Fischli and David Weiss called “The Way Things Go” (1987). This prepares the viewer to the possibility that there are physical connections between objects, and that all of the arts feeds off each other to the extent that boundaries no longer exist. That is exactly one of the points of Muniz’s show, for he combines mechanically produced design objects with artistic objects of a similar aesthetic (A very interesting parallel is Duchamp’s In Advance of the Broken Arm and Gino Colombini’s design for a pail). The absence of wall labels helps the visitor concentrate on visual and theoretical connections as it becomes confusing as to which objects are Art and which are mass produced objects. On a basic level the show asks the question what is art, and answers it by interspersing manufactured objects such as post-its, pencils, scissors, buckets, and other utilitarian objects within the dialogue of the show. Muniz connects visual culture with the common culture, as art is inspired by the everyday and visa versa.

While this may seem to be an obvious, even rudimentary thesis for a show, I found the exhibition to be a huge breath of fresh air. It actually activated the viewer to think of his or her own connections instead of handing things over to you prepackaged and predetermined institutionalized art. And it was a great way to see things from the museum’s collection that normally never surface. Go see it for yourself and make your own visual connections. More of this please!

images from nytimes.com