Brief fragmentary reflections with many facets, notes to clarify certain particular aspects of the singular work of Nathalie Du Pasquier:a figurative and plastic world inhabited only by objects, which she has been developing with almost obsessive consistency and refined aesthetic focus for years, through methodical yet free compositional procedures, inside the confines of the painting, but also with constructed forms and, to an increasing extent, environments.

 From life. It all happens inside a white studio with a very high ceiling and large luminous windows. Light is a fundamental component of this painting lab because Nathalie is one of the few artists still painting directly from life, without photographic go-betweens, and apparently without letting herself go in more or less fantastic inventions. Yet there is nothing life-like about her painting, in the common sense of the term, and nothing naturalistic either. Instead, it has a well-defined visual tension that comes from a slow, concentrated process of observation of objects, an extremely lucid focusing that transforms optical perception into images marked by a clear mental perspective. In other words, we might say that a process of formalization of reality becomes concrete, the reality of the arrayed objects, conserving the intensity and sensitivity of the direct gaze while at the same time taking on connotations that are, in many ways, abstract. The painted image, therefore, is like a delicate, complex synthesis of phenomenal data and conceptual processing, in a suspended space-time dimension. Almost a metaphysical dimension, but cool, cerebral, charged with a silent, rarefied lyricism.

 Metaphysics of objects. Though cultural and stylistic influences are fortunately absent, the paintings seem to contain a distant echo of that metaphysical spell of the still life’s of Giorgio de Chirico, with their alienating, enigmatic plastic solitude, and in particular of the extraordinary poetic "simplicity" of the works of Giorgio Morandi. There is also some link to the plastic pictorial purism of Amedee Ozenfant and Le Corbusier. But more than anything, I think, what we see is a sort of elective affinity with all those painters who have chosen to limit their thematic horizon to the world of objects, starting with Chardin. The apparently paradoxical aspect, in this case, lies in the fact that the more the objects are connected with our everyday universe, the more they are charged with a particular aesthetic charm when freed of their strictly practical identity, and inserted in a context of non-functional relationships, apart from the logic of pure compositional function.
These objects remain themselves, in any case, but tend to lose all the connotations of meaning determined by the incrustations of habit, displaying themselves in a surprising way, revealing their specific, mysterious nature as objects: immobile, defined by precise forms, volumes and colors that enter into unprecedented relationships with other objects and elements of the representation.

  All the objects, including a motorcycle engine, are selected "exclusively" for their formal characteristics, for their full and hollow volumes, their colors, the compactness or transparency of the materials. There is never any intention to use them as metaphors or symbols. The plane of meanings is apparently set to zero. Every type of human presence is rigorously kept outside the confines of the canvas (apart from some cases of simulacra of a hand or a head seen from behind, confirming the rule). It is the more or less interested and attentive gaze of the observer that gets sucked into the painting, animating the scene with its vital energy, only partially stimulated and conditioned by the hidden direction of the artist, a palpable presence in the wings.

 The two times of work. The process of the making of the work happens in two distinct phases, both very important. The first is the concrete construction of the composition, with the selection of the objects that will be its protagonists, their combination and arrangement on a surface. The surface is located at a suitable height beside the easel, normally in such a way as to permit a view that is slightly from above. The play of light and shadow, the chromatic harmonies, are also defined with great care. It is of fundamental strategic importance that the scene should always be equal, absolutely unchanging. The set-up is determined by looking through a frame, a window cut into a piece of cardboard held before the eyes. Preparatory studies in pencil are used for synthetic testing of the definitive focus. The second phase involves the transfer of the drawing onto canvas, and the slow, careful application of the paint: the flat fields of the background, the basic colors of the individual elements, the tonal variations, the plastic volumes and luminous effects. When the organization of the painting is frontal, in some ways a two-dimensional view tends to prevail, reinforced by the closure of the borders, and the objects seem to almost float against the background. But when the composition is placed between two walls, in a corner, it tends to open out toward the external space.

 Closed system/open system. We might say that these paintings find their formal equilibrium through the dialectical tension between two opposing thrusts. On the one hand, a sort of centripetal force that tends to strengthen, in more concentrated terms, the system of relations connecting the various objects, inexorably closing them, so to speak, within the precise confines of the frame. From this point of view what seems to prevail most clearly is the spirit of tight composition, the logic of static balance. But on the other hand a centrifugal tension is at work, though always implemented in a very controlled way, which is determined in particular by two significant elements of visual strategy.
The first is the slight accentuation of the oblique view of the plane of the base, making the objects seem somewhat unstable, as if leaning forward. This visual effect is reinforced by the slight deformation, also in axonometric terms, of the objects themselves. The second element that prompts a more open reading of the compositions, and produces a more dynamic equilibrium, is represented by the modes of framing. In a great many cases the objects are not completely represented: the frame, almost with a photographic approach, excludes certain pieces. This is an intentional way of challenging the conventional authority of the frame, and the virtual space of representation must necessarily refer us to the space outside it.

 This game of refined ambiguity between closure and opening, inside and out, often also happens inside the painting, with the presence of drawers, trays or also painted frames that border and limit the space of existence of a part of the objects in the scene, creating little internal theatres, effects of a painting in a painting.

 Beyond the frame, in environmental space. The dimension of the painting, as physical surface and space of virtual representation, is the fundamental, primary dimension of the artistic operation of Nathalie Du Pasquier. But recently, above all, she has felt the need to go beyond those enchanted confines, also involving the space outside in her work. A need for physical, three-dimensional concreteness has made itself felt, taking form in sculptural projects, spatial installations, true constructed environments. Her earlier experience as a designer in the Memphis group undoubtedly played a significant part in this decision to start making real objects again. But instead of vases or other objects of applied art, sculptures have appeared. They are small constructions in white or coloured wood, whose structure is developed with various geometric modes, including some reference to the neo-plastic and constructivist tradition, but basically expressing a free desire to invent structures and forms of great lightness and elegance.
These sculptures have been completely integrated in the micro-universe of her objects, and it is no coincidence that they often also reappear in her painted compositions. The paintings, in turn, also become objects in space, when together with the sculptures they become part of combinations, taking the form of more complex wall installations.

 Motorized paintings. It may be just a coincidence, but ever since a motorcycle engine - immobile and impotent, on its own – entered the range of objects, the compositional dynamic in Nathalie's work (which had been based for a long time on more measured combinations and equilibria) has begun to open up to freer, more agitated choices, so to speak, even including disorderly accumulations and dilations of the pictorial setting in very large formats. We might say that the presence of the motor has somehow triggered a new acceleration in a direction that is open to who knows what future surprises.

 Constructed environments. The process of dilation into real space has taken on its most complete and engaging form in the creation of two sorts of cabins in painted wood, little rooms with a door for entering, where the internal and external walls host different sculptures, carefully positioned in refined equilibrium, that form a complex, coherent, unified sculptural whole. The paintings also become part of this organic game of combination. The results are surprising: environments (that can be entered and experienced) that are also large sculptures.
Such an operation, substantially based on the same dialectic of closed system/open system discussed above with respect to the paintings, could expand further if the artist has the possibility of working on a total approach to an entire exhibition space.

 One big work. Given the extraordinary coherence of the operative method and the developments of the research, it is clear that Nathalie's work can be seen as a whole, as one great big unified work, without subdivisions. A work that sets its own limits in each instance, but at the same time is continuously open to new possibilities for growth, like a pictorial and plastic organism with its own innate, self-determining energy.