Isa Melsheimer. Compost

Sculptures, installations, paintings and textile works form a highly referenced colourful microcosm, through which Isa Melsheimer explores eminently current issues such as the survival of humanity, its relationship to its environment and sustainability.

For nearly 30 years, she has questioned modern architecture as much as our natural environment through her work. She usually operates in situ. Her work straddles painting, embroidery and sculpture, and includes plants. Her work questions the complex, evolving relationship of humans with their environment.
Architecture plays a central role in the work of Isa Melsheimer, more particularly the shapes and figureheads of modernism, notably Ludwig Mies van der Rohe or Le Corbusier, referred to in the exhibition through the paintings he created in 1938-39 on the walls of Villa E-1027 of Eileen Gray in Roquebrune-Cap-Martin.

For her exhibition at MAMAC, the artist immersed herself in the rich history of the Côte d’Azur, a region of experimentation with modern architecture which today leaves a legacy of villas, sometimes unsuspected, nestled in the heart of the hills among the palm trees.
This interwoven destiny of adventurous backers, open to the innovations of their time, and innovative architects, intersects the imagination of an eternal Riviera and its attractive landscapes. The palm tree, although introduced during the 19th century (massive plantations of tropical species date back to the 1860s), at a time when international winter tourism was developing, today appears as a native plant, and even a symbol of the Côte d’Azur.
The artist offers a hybridisation of this dream, fantasised Riviera and the transformation of the coastline due to the infestation of palm trees by the red weevil.

The gallery is transformed into a dreamlike, metamorphic landscape in which ceramics of the larva of the insect and evocations of modernist architecture intertwine, creating the breeding ground, perhaps a fertile one, of a story to come.

Numerous works, especially the ceramics, have been specially designed for the exhibition.

Isa Melsheimer was born in 1968 in Neuss, Germany. She lives and works in Berlin.
The exhibition also benefits from loans and support from the Esther Schipper gallery in Berlin and the Jocelyn Wolff gallery in Romainville.
The 20th century heritage tours were organised with the support the Architecture and Planning Forum of the Town of Nice.

Isa Melsheimer. Compost / Focus works