Until Monday 17th October 10h-12h15, 14h-18h except on Tuesday
Exposition.
Mark Dion. The Tropical Collectors
Since the beginning of the year 2000, the national Museums of the 20thCentury in the Alpes-Maritimes have placed creation at the heart of their artistic and cultural project. The Pablo Picasso national Museum,War and Peace, in Vallauris, explores more particularly the question of commitment, by inviting renowned contemporary artists to exhibit in the chapel, echoing the painted masterpiece by Pablo Picasso (1881-1973)..
The contemporaryAmerican artist Mark Dion(b. 1961), explores the intersections between art and science, vision and knowledge production, collecting and modes of and the production of knowledge, collection and modes of presentation. By taking the place of an amateur scientist amateur scientist, collector, historian or biologist, the artist takes an often humorous but critical look at the relationship between culture and nature.Mark Dion revives debates on the evolution of natural history, the role of the scientistand the (re)presentation of nature and ecological systems in science in museums, displays or zoos. Focusing on the deconstruction of cultural representations of the natural world, the artist questions the relationship we have with this world today. His work, which explicitly refers to the cabinets of curiosities and is nourished by the history of museums, is not about nature but about the idea of nature. The artist collects ordinary objects and specimens from the living world and organises them into abundant installations. By grouping together elements as diverse as skeletons, naturalized and stuffed animals, plants, labelled jars or books, he creates complex spaces, conceived as microcosms and spaces of scientific fictions.In the chapel, next toWar and Peace, the work The Tropical Collectors (Bates, Spruce and Wallace), created in 2009, will be presented. It refers to three little known Victorian naturalists and tropical collectors. These British explorers were part of a colonial enterprise and are now entirely associated with the history of early science and biology. In the 1850s, people like H.W. Bates, Richard Spruce and Alfred Russell Wallace bravely ventured to South America, crossed the Amazon River and collected, at great risk to their lives, an immense variety of specimens and ethnographic subjects. The Tropical Collectorspresents all the attributes ofthese adventurers, as if their equipment had just arrived on the shores of South America from England.Mark Dion, The Tropical Collectors, installation view inKunstmuseum St-Gallen (Suisse),2016 © Photo : DR / Kunst
Mark Dion, The Tropical collectors, installation, divers médias © Courtesyde l'artiste de la galerie In situ -Fabienne Leclerc, Paris / Romainville, 2022..
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