Vesna Pavlović & Maria Finn: Hidden Narratives
Linda Matney Gallery
5435 Richmond Road, Suite A
Williamsburg, VA
May 6 / June 13, 2011
Opening reception May 6, 7:00-9:00 PM
The theme of the “Hidden Narratives” project is the exploration of the existing friction between the documentary and fictional representations. While Pavlović concentrates on the appropriation of the existing images and modes of their photographic representation, in her drawing and video works, Finn creates fictional narratives that test our ability to comprehend the offered sequences and narratives. The project develops around a group of found vintage slides, which depict one family's travels around the world in the 1960s. While looking into materiality and physicality of these objects, the artists are also exploring the translation of history, travel, and visual tourism, through various modes of representation.
Vesna Pavlović (Belgrade, Serbia) obtained her MFA degree in visual arts from Columbia University in 2007. She is an Assistant Professor of Art at Vanderbilt University where she teaches photography and digital media. Her projects develop as anthropological studies, analyzing different cultures and their visual representations through particular phenomena. She is interested in the experience of history and the changes it brings to society and culture. Issues of taste, desire and expectation, the friction of performance, set in different contexts, are prevailing themes in her work. She has exhibited widely, including solo shows at the Museum of History of Yugoslavia in Belgrade, and the Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento. She has been featured in group exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Belgrade, Tennis Palace Art Museum in Helsinki, Carinthian Museum of Modern Art in Klagenfurt, Austria, Photographers’ Gallery in London, Kettle’s Yard in Cambridge, FRAC Center for Contemporary Art in Dunkerke, France, and Photobiennale 2010 in Thessaloniki, Greece. Vesna Pavlović is the recipient of Robert Penn Warren Fellowship at Vanderbilt University. Her exhibition “Vesna Pavlović: Projected Histories” will be presented at the Gordon Contemporary Artists Project Gallery at the Frist Center for Visual Arts in Nashville in June 2011. http://vesnapavlovic.com
Maria Finn is a Swedish artist that lives and works in Denmark. She has received her MFA from the Royal Academy of Fine Art in Copenhagen in 1997, and has recently earned a PhD in Visual Art at the University of Copenhagen and the Royal Academy of Fine Art in 2010. Her work investigates the relationship between literature, film and landscape. Maria Finn became known for her black and white pencil drawings of featureless figures. These works explore issues of identity, gender, and existential anxiety. She has primarily worked with drawing and photography, but recently has introduced film into her practice. Her films are multilayered stories that present several possible interpretations while exploring the challenge of performativity. The drawings are presented together with photographs, films and wall drawings in scenarios where the different mediums interact and reflect on each other. She has shown in museums in Europe, including Louisiana, Humlebæk, Denmark, Moderna Museet, Stockholm, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, The State Museum of Contemporary Art, Thessaloniki, and Kunstmuseum Thun, Switzerland. In 2008, she curated Technically Sweet with Yvette Brackman at Participant, Inc., New York and Overgaden, Copenhagen, Denmark. She is represented by The Apartment Gallery in Athens, Greece. Her works are found in private collections in Scandinavia, Greece and the United States. www.mariafinn.dk