Artistic approach

Nathalie Junod Ponsard creates luminous artworks and installations that modify the density of spaces and skew our familiar points of reference. Her installations saturate spaces with light whose pure wavelengths unsettle our senses, giving rise, among other things, to a physiological modification of our perceptional frameworks. Space in these new configurations of light becomes a physical and aesthetic experience whose aim is to synchronise with the locale. Nathalie’s research has led her to explore the influence of light on biological systems and to experiment with the boundaries of perception and the psychotropic effects of light.

Nathalie’s work has been presented at many international exhibitions and contemporary art biennials. Major exhibition venues have included the Hildesheim Law Courts for the Evi-Lichtungen Biennial in Germany (Circular Wandering, 2020), the Luxelakes A4 Museum (Chengdu, China, 2015), the MOCA museum of contemporary art (Chengdu, China, 2014), the MACRO museum of contemporary art (Rome, 2011), a double exhibition at Galerie Delacroix and the Palais Moulay Hafid (Tangiers, 2011), the Yekaterinburg Museum of Fine Arts (Russia, 2010), the Palazzo Farnese in Rome (Luce di Pietra Franco-Italian contemporary art trail, 2007), the Palazzo delle Esposizioni (Rome, 2007), the Bauhaus in Dessau (Germany, 2004) the Guggenheim Gallery, Chapman University (Los Angeles, 2002), the Singapore Art Museum (SAM, Biennale, 2001), the Hong Kong Fringe Festival, and French May in Hong Kong. Nathalie represented France at the Western China International Art Biennale 2017 at the Inner Mongolia Art Museum, Hohhot, China.

In 2010 and 2011, some of Nathalie’s artworks were acquired by the Fonds National d’art contemporain (FNAC), the Mobilier National, and in 2019 by the Centre National des Arts Plastiques (CNAP). A retrospective was presented in 2014 at the MOCA (Museum of Contemporary Art) and the Greenland 468 Center in Chengdu, China.

In France, site-specific light creations have been exhibited at the Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature (Twilight,2018); L’Épaisseur de la lumière was presented at the Espace Fondation EDF (2013); La lisière du visible (2014), commissioned by the Centre des Monuments Nationaux, was presented at the Basilica of Saint-Denis; immersive installations were created for the Biennale “La Science de l’art en Essonne”; Relativité spatiale was shown at the Institut des Arts Visuels, Orléans (2009); Horizon persistant (2008) was presented at the Hermès flagship store in Paris. Nathalie Junod Ponsard has exhibited in national museums including the Pompidou Centre (2005), the La Passerelle contemporary art centre in Brest and the Gaîté Lyrique in Paris (2004). She has made two sculptural installations: Particules brillantes et flottantes and Alpha (2023), exhibited at Maison Poincaré, Musée des Mathématiques in Paris.

Her creations have occupied various sites, both inside and out: the Pontoise swimming pool for the first Nuit Blanche (Deep Water, 2002); a skating rink in Montreal (2011); the lake jetty in Geneva; the roof of a Singapore skyscraper; the Maison Neyrand in Lyon; and the Grande Galerie of the Forum des Halles in Paris (2005-2007). Other extraordinary sites have included the Jantar Mantar Observatory in New Delhi (Festival of France in India, 1989); the Château d’Assas in Le Vigan; the former Buddhist Temple in Beijing (2014); and the house of the gallerist and collector Louis Carré near Paris designed by Alvar Aalto. For her solo exhibition Solaires at the Louis Carré House, site-specific installations created shifts of perception that felt like walking into the future. In 2022, the Baudoin Lebon gallery presented Figura Serpentinata, featuring a site-specific light installation giving visitors the sensation of “dissolving”, accompanied by original glass sculptures.  In spring 2023, she presented the work titled Light Under Skin at the Jinji Lake Biennale in Suzhou (China).

Nathalie Junod Ponsard has created several permanent monumental pieces for public areas. Her main public and private commissions in Paris are the monumental work titled Le dépli de la lumière (2017) incorporated into the façades of the Austerlitz Building; Crépuscule persistant (2010-2020) on the Place Malraux , commissioned by the Ministry of Culture and the CNAP; L’invisibilité, a permanent commission from the ENSAV in Versailles; Phénoménologie de la lumière and En flottement (2005-2010) at the Pompidou Centre; Étendues latérales (2011) on the façade of the Galerie des Gobelins commissioned by the Mobilier National; and Précieuse brilliance for‘Embellir Paris’ (2019) on the Place de l’Europe-Simone Veil.  In Rome, permanent artworks can be seen in the Palazzo delle Esposizioni and a monumental work titled Horizon flottant can be seen at the MACRO museum of contemporary art. In 2021, the artist designed a carpet titled Odyssée for the main staircase of the Elysée Palace: commissioned by the Mobilier National, this site-specific work seems to unfurl at our feet as if we are walking on a feeling of light. In Barcelona, she created the permanent artwork Songe Solaire (2022) for the façade of the new Hermès store. For the new Athletes’ Village in Saint-Denis (France) built for the 2024 Olympics, she has created two permanent works titled Le moment magnétique and Voie Lactée (2023) at Halle Maxwell, a former power plant.