Since the Renaissance the Curiosity Сabinets have been known as a form of a private museum. The collection could be limited to just a glass case filled with favorite keepsakes, oddities, bibelots etc. Sometimes, among the fossils, bones and stuffed animals, objeсts d’art and object de vertue could be found.  Evidently, the collectors equated the samples of nature ingenuity and art or artisanal skill.

 

In Samples to emulate there is no intention to astonish with rarities. In our times of informational excess there is no exotic left to marvel. As noted by Levi Strauss, nowadays the spices for which the seafarers of the past risked their lives can be found on a shelf of an ordinary grocery.         

 

Here in this cabinet the testimonies of nature’s creativity are pigeonholed alongside with artist’s exercises imitating the process of biological development. The juxtaposition of real found objects and handmade simulacra demonstrates a special case of creativity, when the artist, instead of copying or mimicking the nature, explores the nature’s methodology to produce things never seen before.