Nathalie du Pasquier

One is gently guided through the wonderful world of abstraction through the lens of Nathalie Du Pasquier's geometry dominant work. She places no precedence on any particular color, save maybe a pop of color to accent a shape. Her work is varied in it's subjects; still life arrangements are reminiscent of Giorgio Morandi paintings of elegant bottles, while sculptures stand like stark monochrome totem poles. Featured on the ICA website's is a still life capture of a bike seat with a stack of notebooks bungee corded in place. I really love that particular piece for it's use of primary colors in a subtle way.

A few summers ago, when I still lived in Philly, I saw her exhibition at the ICA, titled 'Big Objects Not Always Silent.' Du Pasquier was very influential during the Memphis post modernist movement, however, I hadn't heard of her before seeing that particular exhibit. Characteristic of the Memphis style, her work blends the artistic expression of the postmodernist 80's with contemporary and classic industrial features like brick, wood, and steel functioning as literal building blocks for both her sculptures and paintings. Her sculptures are wonderfully stark, basic in their construction, and easy to make parallels to the compositions of her paintings. She tends to distort perspective and scale, a play on reality, a new way of looking at the mundane.