Irene Kopelman [Argentina, 1974] explores in her work systems of representation, their methodologies, and possible transfers between them. Her interest is mostly focused on modern systems, their logic and techniques, before the digital age. One strand of her work takes as departure point scientific systems as found, for example, in natural history collections, with their methods of categorization, archiving, documentation and visual representation.

A second interrelated strand evolves around representations of space, as in images of landscapes, geographical maps or architectural designs and models. Kopelman transfers samples of items, objects, subject matters or categories between such systems, for instance bringing two dimensional visual representations [e.g., in drawing, photography] back to three dimensions, using various scales, techniques and materials. In this way new layers of, associations and meanings are created, between the ‘objectivity’ of scientific techniques and the subjective interpretations of their uses and outcomes, but without deviating from the formal characteristics of the original object.

The above strands are combined in the installation ‘Scale 1:2.5’ made in situ at outLINE. In the empty white cube of the gallery she has taken as starting point the texture of the walls’ surface, dealing with the exhibition space as a potential landscape. She has mapped out the walls in an architectural grid and reproduced the entire surface scale 1:1 using the technique of frottage. On the frottages the architectural surfaces come out as images that resemble landscapes seen from the sky. Rubbing over the walls and tracing every single tiny detail of its texture, the white emptiness is suddenly turned to an intense and crowded image that invites the eye to explore differences and repetitions in its complex patterns. Kopelman has subsequently photographed square by square the entire grid of the frottages, this time scale 1:2.5 and then returned the new photographic images back in visual and conceptual encounter with the original places at the gallery walls.

Thus the entire visual representation is brought back to its original architectural and physical space. For all the precision and objectivity of the reproduction techniques [the grid, the frottage, the photography] the successive transfers give birth to images that evoke complex subjective associations. Associations that move between perceptions, categories and representation methods of architecture and landscape, emptiness and fullness, space and matter, the concrete and the abstract, the tactile and the visual.

Irene Kopelman lives and works in Amsterdam. In 2002/3 she was a resident of the Rijksakademie Van Beeldende Kunsten. She has participated in a number of exhibitions in Europe and Argentina, including Logicas Desviadas, at 713 Gallery, Buenos Aires, Levity at The Drawing Center, New York, ‘fumus fugiens’ at Smart Project Space, Amsterdam. Together with Mariana Castillo Deball they have formed the Uqbar Foundation that organised the project ‘A for Alibi’ in collaboration with de Appel in Amsterdam in 2007, and the project ‘fuga di un piano’ currently on show at Manifesta 7 in Rovereto.

Eva Fotiadi is currently completing a Ph.D in contemporary art at the University of Amsterdam. Since 2001 she has been occasionally working and writing for exhibitions in Greece, the Netherlands and Egypt. She has studied art history, archaeology and museum studies in Greece and the U.K.