February 14, 2007

Sergio Vega to discuss his work and career in Harn Museum lecture

GAINESVILLE, Fla. – On March 1, Sergio Vega, artist and University of Florida professor, will present a public lecture on his work and career. The lecture will be held at the Harn Museum of Art and begins at 6 p.m. Vega’s installation piece, “Shanty Nucleus after Derrida,” is on display in the Harn’s Cofrin Pavilion as part of the “International Contemporary Art from the Harn Museum Collection” exhibition, running through July 22.

“Shanty Nucleus after Derrida,” takes its name from both the deconstruction theories of French philosopher Jacques Derrida and from an installation series by Brazilian artist Helio Oiticica. The work consists of photographs mounted on twenty boards cut in various geometric shapes that are suspended from the ceiling. The artist questions the possibility of photography to function as sculpture by allowing visitors to walk between the boards, viewing the piece from various positions both within and outside of the installation. The photographs represent shanties in Mato Grosso, Brazil inviting a correlation between the collage and formalist elements of the architectural images with the pristine modernist shapes of the boards that support them.  Vega has created work focusing on Mato Grosso for years as part of his ongoing project “El Paraíso en el Nuevo Mundo,” or, Paradise in the New World. This project centers on a 17th century manuscript by Antonio de León Pinelo that suggested the Garden of Eden lies in South America. Vega’s travels and work in  Mato Grosso have revealed the extraordinary  contradictions of this concept.

“Sergio Vega is an internationally acclaimed artist renown for his incisive perspectives on history, art and contemporary culture.  His installations bring together diverse elements of modern architecture, Brazilian sculpture, documentary photography and avant-garde collage to focus on the conflicts and contradictions of a tropical paradise. With ironic humor, he points to the disparity between utopian visions and the dystopian realities of everyday life,” said Harn Museum curator Kerry Oliver-Smith.

Born in Argentina, Vega has been a full-time faculty member at UF since 1999, teaching in the photography and sculpture departments. Vega received an MFA in sculpture from Yale University in 1996.  He has participated in numerous international exhibitions in Italy, France, the Netherlands, South Korea, Japan and South Africa in venues such as the Venice Biennale, and the Johannesburg and Leon Biennials.  In June 2006, he presented “Crocodilian Fantasies,” his first solo exhibition at a European museum, at Palais de Tokyo in Paris. The Harn Museum presented his solo exhibition Modernismo Tropical in 2000. His work has been reviewed in ArtForum, Art in America, Art News, Freeze, Artnexus, Atlantica, Bomb Magazine, Camera Austria, Flash Art, Bijutsi Techno, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Miami Herald, Il Manifesto, Il sole, Le Monde and Time Magazine.

Admission to the Harn Museum of Art is free. For more information about programs and events call 352.392.9826 or visit www.harn.ufl.edu.

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The Harn Museum, at SW 34^th St. and Hull Rd., Gainesville, Fla., is one of the southeast’s largest university art museums with more than 6,200 works in its collection and an array of temporary exhibitions. Admission is free. The museum enhances the activities of the University and serves a culturally diverse audience through educational programming. The Harn expanded by more than 18,000 square feet in Oct. 2005 with the opening of the Mary Ann Harn Cofrin Pavilion, which includes new educational and meeting areas and the Camellia Court Cafe, the first eatery for visitors of the University of Florida Cultural Plaza. Museum Hours are 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Friday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday and 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. Sunday. The Camellia Court Café is open 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Monday through Saturday and 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. Sunday. The Museum and Café are open until 10 p.m. Thursdays for Museum Nights. For more information call 352.392.9826 or visit www.harn.ufl.edu.