Les Éditions Ateliers d'Art de France

                                                                                                                            Edition avril - mai 2022 - Numero 157

The magazine Ateliers d'Art de France has just published its latest issue with a special report on animal sculpture as well as monographs and portraits of artists from all horizons.

And this month, my portrait appears in this new April-May 2022 edition along with those of Lucie Houdkova and Grégoire Lemaire.

… Passer de l’infiniment petit à l’infiniment grand, du limité à l’illimité, est le principal axiome de cet incroyable jeu de puzzle …

Like mandalas of light, this artist's creations belong to a multidimensional realm.

Her futuristic and 100% exponential world plays with a diversity of materials and a wide variety of optical effects.

Moving from the infinitely small to the infinitely large and from the limited to the limitless is the main axiom of these incredible puzzles: super-sized mosaics that Nathalie Vin creates with the determination and audacity of the greatest explorers. Halfway between sculptures and conceptual installations, her projects often require several months of tenacious work and several weeks of preliminary research on the design. Through many adventures, in London and now in Majorca, this self-taught woman who never planned to become an artist developed a passion for the art of murals or more specifically, for the spectacular treatment of space. However, this journey to the far reaches of pixelisation would not be what it is today had it not been for her innate sense of innovation.

"It all started with the 'Glow Project', a night-time multimedia event during which images were projected on a building in Brighton. After a stint at HEC as a recruiter (a prestigious French business school), I left for the United Kingdom where I created large fluorescent murals in nightclubs. So, for a long time I worked at night, in the dark and that familiarised me with other visual perceptions. I soon took an interest in odd materials." She mentions her first encounter with the artistry that is now her own: "The trigger was certainly embroidering with my grandmother when I visited her as a child. That's where I learned patience. In mosaic art, everything is fragmented and therefore calculated, anticipated with the utmost precision. From a single tessera, thousands of others fall into place. Every time it's a huge challenge, an incessant battle between the abstract idea and the inevitable gravity of matter.

With the minutia of a clock maker, Nathalie Vin draws the path from individual to universal, through ever-expanding megalopolises, intra-urban mazes that revolutionise mosaic art with their kinetic approach. Multiplicity of expressions and diversity of materials are the goals of 'Multiverse' a cosmogonic piece where connection, in its literal sense, plays a leading role. Back to monochrome in 'Wonder Where We Land', a checkerboard of cast shadows that suggests a bird's eye view of a city. In 'Free As The Air', the curved silhouette of a Koi fish inspired the artist to use circular tesserae. A rare occurrence in mosaic art: small-scale circles determine a large-scale curve. Finally, in 'Let There Be Light', a hyper sophisticated frame dialogues with the preciousness of black gold. In other works, such as 'Space Odyssey', the sparkle comes from glow-in-the-dark tesserae and a hologram acting as a third eye. Each piece possesses its own main thread and prism of initiation.

Nathalie Vin could very well be in her own way a time traveller. The galaxies she recreates before our very eyes never cease to question the worlds hidden inside of us.

… Nathalie Vin could very well be in her own way a time traveller. The galaxies she recreates before our very eyes never cease to question the worlds hidden inside of us …

MULTIVERSE - 2014

Photo credit: Simon Martner

http://www.nathalievin.com

http://www.editionsateliersdart.com