fragments of urban architecture become amorphous representations of infrastructure

manhattan’s skyscrapers become abstracted geometries in artist vicente muñoz latest body of work, ‘virtual transparency’. the photography series appropriates fragments of urban architecture to create amorphous representations of corporate infrastructure. the city’s vast glass ‘curtain walls’ generate architectural phenomenons known as ‘glazing distortions’, which are caused by the curvature of glass façades. the proximity of buildings in new york — and other similarly dense urban landscapes — allow light to reflect and refract on certain building surfaces, creating waves of illumination, patches of patterns and depth-defying distortions.

presented in muñoz’s forthcoming monograph, virtual transparency seeks to investigate the ambiguous relationship between reality and virtuality. between beams of light — refracted from one building façade to another — the conflict between ‘real and virtual’ seemingly reveals a portal-like dimension into another world. manhattan, always magnificent, has never looked so mesmerizing.