“Vision/Revison: Contemporary Art from the Harn Collection” opens Nov. 13

November 8, 2007

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — The works of several notable contemporary artists, including Robert Rauschenburg, El Anatsui, James Rosenquist and Andy Warhol, will be on exhibit at the Harn Museum of Art for the next eight months.

“Vision/Revision: Contemporary Art from the Harn Collection” opens Tuesday. The exhibit highlights the mutable relationships among art, artists and viewers and the multiple layers of meaning that can be created in response to a work of art. While vision implies a unique and original insight, revision suggests the transformation and proliferation of meanings, and a cyclical relationship between the past and present and between production and reception.

Several artists in the exhibition reinterpret the past in terms of the present with historical positioning and repositioning being an essential process of revising.

For example, Ghanian artist El Anatsui transforms traditional and ceremonial “kente” cloth into a metallic tapestry with discarded bottle caps. The work reconsiders issues of colonial legacies as well as contemporary patterns of consumption and waste.

Artists working in film will also be featured. Films will be rotated every three months in the Cofrin Pavilion’s changing film room, beginning with Columbian artist Oscar Muñoz, one of Latin America’s most acclaimed contemporary artists. Muñoz explores the effect of political violence and the ephemerality and vulnerability of human life in “Re/trato,” a compelling evocation of the “disappeared” in during the dirty wars of Columbia. Muñoz’s work has been exhibited worldwide, most recently as a part of the 2007 Venice Biennale in Italy.

The show is on display until July 20. For more information about the Harn Museum of Art visitwww.harn.ufl.edu or call 352-392-9826.