Harn’s newest installation features international contemporary art
GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Beginning Dec. 22, the Harn Museum of Art will feature the work of renowned contemporary artists in the second exhibition in the Mary Ann Harn Cofrin Pavilion. In contrast to the Cofrin Pavilion’s inaugural exhibition, International Contemporary Art from the Harn Museum Collection will feature the work of international contemporary artists alongside their American counterparts.
On view through July 22, International Contemporary Art from the Harn Museum Collection will demonstrate that art produced across cultures is richly diverse despite globalism. Featured will be more than 30 artists who span the continents of Europe, North America, Latin America, Africa and Asia working in painting, sculpture, drawing, prints, photography, installation and video from 1945 to the present.
Some groupings in the exhibition will focus on a specific artist, medium, art school or national identity while others will juxtapose art across cultures and suggest intriguing reflections on similarities, differences and the complexities of cross-cultural expression and communication. South African artist William Kentridge and Chinese artist Gu Wenda work on the borders between time and culture and explore the nuances of language and writing, drawing and script, yet they explore radically different questions. Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama and French/American artist Louise Bourgeois have divergent formal concerns, yet both work with textile as a sculptural material and both are deeply involved in subconscious and personal aspects of art and life.
A centerpiece of the exhibition is a special installation made exclusively for the Harn Museum by Sergio Vega. Vega, born in 1959 in Buenos Aires, Argentina, currently lives and works in Gainesville, where he is a professor of sculpture at the University of Florida. He received an MFA in sculpture from Yale University in 1996. Vega’s work has been displayed at many museum exhibitions and biennials, including the Queens Museum of Art, the International Center of Photography, New York, the 51st Venice Biennale, the Villa Medici in Rome and the 2nd Johannesburg Biennale.
The exhibition also will feature a video installation room with changing works every two to three months beginning with Tide Table, a 2003 animated work by Kentridge (b. 1955). Kentridge’s method differs from traditional animation in that he uses a single sheet of paper for many frames, filming a series of additions and erasures rather than a succession of separate images. Literal erasure of the images can function metaphorically in Kentridge’s films, alluding to the disappearance of people, communities and memory.
International Contemporary Art from the Harn Museum Collection is made possible by Christie’s with additional support from the Sidney Knight Endowment. For more information about the Harn Museum of Art, call 352.392.9826 or visit www.harn.ufl.edu.
Credits
- Contact
- Christine Hale, chale@harn.ufl.edu, 352-392-9826
