Through this exhibition at the Musée de Préhistoire de Terra Amata, François Mauplot offers a stroll through a gallery of portraits, portraits of prehistoric stone tools cut 400,000 years ago.
As in the purest tradition of portraiture, photography follows drawing and François Mauplot wanted to confront the two aspects of the representation of the prehistoric object by juxtaposing scientific drawing with visual photographs.
Are the two representations of the same object in conflict, are they opposed?
To fuel confrontations and contradictions, the intention of this exhibition is to juxtapose two diametrically opposed views since one is descriptive and without any interpretation of the form of the object while the other seeks the subjective and the sensitive in a constraint of plastic and aesthetic reading. The drawing, in accordance with a strict application of a standardization of signs, is devoid of any interpretation of its author, it must be read and identified objectively, however the typological drawing can reveal a graphic aesthetic. François Mauplot’s photography plays with great freedom with the object, the manipulation of light reveals the textures, the fractures, the shapes of the tools. His sensitive black and white photographic portraits and drawings of “cut stones”, all from the site of Terra Amata 400,000 years ago: choppers, chopping tools, bifaces, cleavers… together reveal a formal, very modern aesthetic.
François Mauplot : Outils entre art et science
Until September 22, 2024
Musée de Préhistoire de Terra Amata
25, boulevard Carnot – Nice
Free for under 18
Museum open every day except Tuesday
From 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. from May 2 to October 31
Contacts: 04 93 55 59 93 or [email protected]
François Mauplot
www.francoismauplot.com
