Nathalie Elemento

"My work, in general, is a reflection on "interior furniture": on the objects that inhabit us, the mental postures we adopt or that make us capable or not of adaptation. It is a simple work of sculpture with the table as an ideal base and all the concerns related to a work of volume but in the "in-between". It is by no means a work of design in which practice is at work, but rather a work of correspondence in which the possibilities (the ways of approaching situations) of each person are tried out: the extension, the table, the drawer, the desk are common spaces but which are felt as various specific situations. My work is an attempt at representation: the opposite of staging or an installation. I develop the concept of "sculpture of use", not practical at all but quite practicable, where the history of the gaze is that of memory. My sculptures are true "interior architectures" that mix elements of furniture, from "inhabited" and "housing", and other objects of use whose meaning I question. It is a work that raises the possibilities of living with them, first through the gaze and then through the possible uses that may be experienced and approached. I am more specifically interested in the etymology of the intimate, which is the "most inward", the "most essential" (language). Beyond everyday life, it is our capacity for "inner" adaptation (the "locus-dit", the "Decorum") that interests me by questioning our way of approaching certain functions of objects. I have also worked on the constructions and personal arrangements (psychic and physical) that we all have to create to live and survive. First through "decorum" ("convenience" in English) and its forms and then its distortion concerning each other. The substance, the form, the format, or formatting: we are confronted with "undergoing" to then better transcribe and retransform, accumulating cultural, sentimental, psychic, familial, political data that we then have to reorder."

Nathalie Elemento is present in many public and private collections (MNAM, Centre Georges Pompidou, Fonds national d’art contemporain FNAC, FRAC IDF, FRAC PACA, FRAC Limousin, FRAC Alsace, FRAC Bourgogne, MAC Lyon, Caisse des dépôts et consignations, Collection F. & D. Guerlain, Collection Société Générale, Collection RAJA & Villa Datris Foundation…).