Self Portrait, Back of Head (from Pictures of Magazines) 2003

Vik Muniz made this portrait – or, more accurately, self-portrait – from magazine cuttings. I can’t help but think about the Sisyphean task that Muniz set for himself, collecting and arranging these tiny fragments to build up this image. It’s not just about representation, is it? It’s about the labor, the time, the sheer obsessive quality of it all. There is a feeling of being submerged in this sea of paper dots. As a painter, I am always thinking about the surface. The way a mark sits, how it interacts with the layer beneath, the push and pull of color. Muniz does it with paper. You could imagine him hunched over a table, patiently placing each piece, adjusting, refining. It is, in some way, the kind of repetitive action that happens in painting. All artists are scavengers, borrowing, stealing, and transforming. We are forever in conversation, building upon what has come before, questioning, and pushing back. Every gesture is a dialogue.