Vik Muniz: Afterglow. Pictures of Ruins

Afterglow: Pictures of Ruins on show at Palazzo Cini, in collaboration with Ben Brown Fine Arts, London, is the solo show by contemporary artist and photographer Vik Muniz featuring photographs inspired by old master’s paintings and a glass sculpture homaging Venice.

The artist’s sources of inspiration for this work, especially conceived for Palazzo Cini, are the exhibition Rediscovered Masterpieces from the Vittorio Cini Collection (2016) and some of the masterpieces in the collection by great artists such as Francesco Guardi, Dosso Dossi and Canaletto.

Muniz choose a vivid range of colors evoking these of the paintings and creating a dialogue between temporary and permanent exhibited works. The artist is fascinated by architectural capriccio, architectural fantasy in 17th- and 18th-century Italian painting, and by the Venetian tradition of painting, interpreting them in a contemporary key by simulating the brushstrokes of the old masters and using cuttings of illustrations from art books. The final result is Afterglow, a new recent series linking with the past.

The exhibition also includes a glass sculpture realized at the Berengo Studio 1989, Murano using different glass-making techniques, as a tribute to the Venice lagoon.