This summer, the Musée d’Art moderne et d’Art contemporain (MAMAC) in Nice presents the works of Irene Kopelman, an Argentinian artist who likes to explore exceptional ecosystems, where she seeks to understand the mechanisms of the living world.

Visitors will have the pleasure to discover a series produced in the tropical rainforest of Panama in 2014, entitled Project Vertical Landscape, Lianas, a series of drawings on mangroves made in Bocas del Toro, two large paintings, based on the series of Banyan tree drawings, made especially for this exhibition, and some drawings from the Crab Pellets series.

Kopelman’s art definitely borrows patterns from both nature and the history of science and the materials she has gathered from observation or research become vehicles for her artistic work. Her inspirations include the expeditions of renowned explorers such as Ernest Shackleton as well as hundreds and hundreds of images that she has compiled during her study in natural science museum collections, libraries and botanical gardens.

Born in Cordoba in 1974 where she obtained her bachelor’s and master’s degree in painting and now based in Amsterdam where, in 2002, she began researching the representations of landscapes as recorded by 18th and 19th century naturalists, the young artist splits her time between Europe and America. This has allowed her to observe the methodologies of scientists at work in the field all around the world which ignited her curiosity as to how they framed and organized a subject that was vast, essentially dispersed and extremely dynamic.

Over the years, Kopelman has spent a period of time at Manu Learning Centre, Madre de Dios, Peru in 2012. She has also joined a group of 40 scientists from Malaysia’s Sabah Parks and The Netherlands Centre for Biodiversity Naturalis (NCB) on an expedition to Mount Kinabalu in Malaysia, and since 2012, the artist has started a long-term collaboration with the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) in Panama, which has enabled her to explore subjects such as lianas, marine invasive species, mangroves and fiddler crabs particular to the region.

With each of her works, Kopelman evokes the scale and movements of the landscape, the entanglements and interdependence of the elements. Her drawings, paintings and sculptures are characterized by imperfections that foreground the conditions (cramped, dusty, rainy, etc.) of their making.

The exhibition runs until the 30th of September, 2018. Open daily except Monday from 10am to 6pm; Full price tickets cost 10€

CONTACT DETAILS
MAMAC
Place Yves Klein
06300 NICE

Tel: +33 (0)4 97 13 42 01

Lead image © RIVIERA BUZZ, all rights reserved