Sergio Vega to discuss his work and career during Museum Nights

February 28, 2007

GAINESVILLE, Fla. –– Internationally acclaimed artist and University of Florida Associate Professor Sergio Vega will present a lecture on his work and career at 6 p.m. March 1 at the Harn Museum of Art during Museum Nights. Vega’s installation piece, “Shanty Nucleus after Derrida,” is included in the exhibition “International Contemporary Art from the Harn Museum Collection,” on view in the Harn’s Cofrin Pavilion through September 2007.

At 7:30 p.m. following Vega’s lecture, visitors can tour the exhibition with a knowledgeable Harn docent and discover Vega’s work face-to-face, along with the other works featured in the exhibition from artists spanning the globe, such as William Kentridge, Frank Stella, Candida Höfer and Fernando Botero.

“Shanty Nucleus after Derrida” takes its name from the deconstruction theories of Jaques Derrida and consists of 20 boards suspended from the ceiling, some containing mounted photos of shanties in Mato Grosso, Brazil. The work questions the possibility of photography to function as sculpture and allows visitors to walk between the boards, viewing the piece from various positions both within and outside of the work.

Vega has done work in Mato Grosso for years as part of his ongoing project “El Paraíso en el Nuevo Mundo,” or Paradise in the New World. The project centers on a 17th century manuscript by Antonio de León Pinelo that suggested the Garden of Eden lie in South America. Vega traveled to Mato Grosso in search of such a paradise. His travels became source material for this installation at the Harn as well as his solo exhibition at Boston’s Institute of Contemporary Art titled “Tropicalounge,” a room-scale installation featuring sculpture, photography, video and text.

Born in Argentina, Vega has been a full-time faculty member at UF since 1999, teaching in the photography and sculpture departments. He received an MFA in sculpture from Yale University in 1996, and has participated in numerous international exhibitions in Italy, France, the Netherlands, South Korea, Japan and South Africa. In June 2006, he presented “Crocodilian Fantasies,” at Palais de Tokyo in Paris, his first solo exhibition at a European museum. His work has been reviewed in Artgorum, 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.