The Other

Nara Roesler New York presents The Other, an exhibition curated by Vik Muniz that concludes the celebrations marking 50 years of Nara Roesler’s career as a gallerist. On view from November 5, 2026, through January 2027, the exhibition brings together works by Antonio Dias, Julio Le Parc, Tomie Ohtake, Daniel Buren, Richard Long, Sheila Hicks, Heinz Mack, Isaac Julien, JR, Cao Guimarães, Jonathas de Andrade, Amelia Toledo, Carlito Carvalhosa, Marco Maggi, Alexandre Arrechea, Xavier Veilhan, Angelo Venosa, Not Vital, Maria Klabin, Marco A. Castillo, and Jose Dávila, as well as Muniz himself. Bringing together different artistic languages and periods, the exhibition explores how each individual’s perception of themselves depends on an external perspective that remains inaccessible to them: that of the other.

The point of departure is the concept of “excess of seeing,” formulated by Russian philosopher Mikhail Bakhtin, according to which each individual perceives aspects of others that remain inaccessible to them themselves. Muniz relates this idea to artistic practice, which requires a shift in perspective to observe something from another vantage point. A work of art, in turn, acquires meanings that extend beyond its creator’s intentions and also depend on the viewer’s experience. The exhibition builds on questions that have informed Muniz’s artistic practice, which is marked by the construction of images using materials such as sugar, chocolate, and waste. By recreating familiar images with unexpected elements and photographing the results, the artist investigates how we recognize and interpret what we see.

This attention to perception also informs Muniz’s curatorial work at Nara Roesler, with which he has maintained a longstanding collaboration. In 2012, he curated Buzz, an exhibition within the Roesler Hotel program dedicated to Op Art and effects that challenge visual perception. In 2018, he co-curated Screenspace with Lucas Blalock and Barney Kulok, an exhibition exploring visual culture and the uses of photography in a post-digital context. The projects addressed distinct questions, but both stemmed from an investigation into the production and interpretation of images. Among the works featured in The Other is Black Mirror (1968), in which Antonio Dias uses Formica-covered wood to construct a black object whose surface reflects images diffusely. The material interferes with the recognition of what appears before it, turning reflection into less a faithful reproduction of the world than an experience mediated by perception. In Global Myopia (Parking Mirror) (2010), Marco Maggi makes incisions in a convex mirror, interfering with the reflected image. In Mundo de espelho (1966), Amelia Toledo uses six cut and perforated stainless-steel pieces to fragment and multiply reflections of the surrounding environment. Both works explore the limits of perception and the relationship between the observer and what they see. In Senhorio, por Reginaldo, from the Eu, mestiço series (2017), Jonathas de Andrade combines portraiture and text to investigate how social and racial conventions shape the perception of individuals. The work is part of a project that revisits research into the criteria used to assign characteristics and values to people based on their images. In Retroatos # 01 (1998/2016), Cao Guimarães brings together twenty photographs, exploring portraiture as a form of documentation and as a mediation between the photographed subject and the viewer.

Taken together, the works offer different approaches to the distance between seeing and being seen. Their diversity of artistic languages and trajectories does not point to a shared aesthetic program. Rather, what brings the artists together is the way each introduces an external perspective into their creative process, whether through the manipulation of images, the viewer’s participation, or an investigation into the codes that shape perception.

The gallery’s location adds another dimension to this discussion. As Muniz observes, Nara Roesler is a Brazilian institution based in New York, a foreign presence within a cultural context distinct from the one in which it originated. In dialogue with philosopher Julia Kristeva’s reflections on alterity as a constitutive part of the subject, The Other invites viewers to consider the other not only as someone different from ourselves, but also as that which we have yet to recognize within ourselves.