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Think you’ve seen this image before? Think again.
Rising contemporary art star Vik Muniz examines the nature of photography’s assumed “truth” by remaking iconic images from unusual material. Over the course of this in-demand artist’s career, he has remade Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa and Claude Monet’s painting of the cathedral at Rouen, employing sugar, thread, wire, peanut butter and other everyday materials in these remarkable creations.

A closer look at this work provides insight into the artist’s elaborate creative process. Here he reinterprets Vincent van Gogh’s Sunflowers by following a methodical sequence of events. First, he creates a handmade pixelization construction of the image out of Pantone color chips. Then, after photographing the collage, he completely dismantles it. Because the original collage is destroyed, the photograph becomes the only surviving "art."

When encountering Muniz’s photographs, viewers initially feel gratified as they experience a moment of recognition. However, this gratification is often shortlived as they approach the work and realize it isn’t coming into expected focus to resemble the work in their mind’s eye. It is this interplay between memory and deception that is a driving force behind many of Muniz’s creations.