Nathalie Junod Ponsard creates works or luminous installations modifying the density of spaces and unsettling our usual landmarks. Her installations, as a result of several experimentations, fill lightful locations with pure and saturated wavelengths troubling the senses and arousing, among other feelings, a physiological modification of our perceptual markers. The way space is experienced in new configurations of light becomes a physical and aesthetic experience that relates to an attempt to synchronize site. Her investigations have led her to explore the influence of light on biological systems and to test the limits of perception and the psychotropic effects of light. Light is something that reveals a constant influence on ourselves, and which speaks of the way we confront the here-and-now.
Plato called colour pharmakon: a drug. According to Barthes, “colour submerges”.
Her works had been the centre of many international exhibitions and she participated in biennial contemporary art shows. Among her most important exhibitions, we can name Circular Wandering, a work on the Hildesheim’s law court during the Internationale Licht Kunst Biennale in Germany (2020), the Luxelakes A4 Art Museum with a major work for the inaugural exposition in 2015 (Chengdu, China), the Museum of Contemporary Art (MoCA) at Chengdu (China, 2014) – the Museum of Contemporary Art of Rome (MACRO), Rome, 2011 – a double exhibition at the Galerie Delacroix and at the Palais Moulay Hafid (Tangier, 2011) – the Modern Art Gallery or the Ural’s Museum, Ekaterinburg, Russia, 2010 – the Palazzo Farnese (for the Franco-Italian contemporary art process Luce di Pietra 2007) – the Palazzo de Esposizioni, Rome 2007, – the Bauhaus Dessau, Germany, 2004 – the Guggenheim Gallery (Chapman University), Los Angeles, 2002 – the Singapore Art Museum (SAM, Biennial), Singapore, 2001, the Hong Kong’s Fringe Festival and the French May in Hong Kong. The artist was France’s representant during the Western China International Art Biennale 2017 that took place at the Inner Mongolia Art Museum, Hohhot, China.
In 2014, a retrospective exhibition was held simultaneously in the Museum Contemporary Art (MoCA) and in the Wuhan Greenland Centre in Chengdu, China. In 2010 and 2011, the Fonds National d’art contemporain (FNAC), the Mobilier National and in 2019 the Centre national des arts plastiques (CNAP) purchased some of her works.
In France, the luminous works created in their environment are exhibited at the Musée de la Chasse et de la Nature : Twilight (2018), L’Épaisseur de la lumière at the Espace Fondation EDF (2013) – The Edge of the Visible One (2014), commissioned by the Centre des Monuments Nationaux for the Basilica of Saint-Denis, immersive installations for the La Science de l’art Biennial (Essonne) – Relativité spatiale, which immerse the Institut des Arts Visuels, Orléans (2009) – Persistant Horizon (2008) on the Maison Hermès. Nathalie Junod Ponsard’s work was exhibited in national museums, like the Centre Pompidou (2005), the Passerelle Centre d’Art Contemporain in Brest or in the Gaîté Lyrique, Paris (2004)
Her luminous art work extend and spread on various inside or outside locations; Deep Water in the Pontoise pool for the first Nuit Blanche (2002), in a skating rink at Montréal (2011), at the Lake Geneva’s pier, on the roof of a Singapourian skyscrapper, at the Maison Neyrand in Lyon, at the Grande Galerie du Forum des Halles in Paris (2005 – 2007). Her work can also be seen on outstanding locations : the Jantar Mantar observatories of New Delhi (Festival of France in India, 1989), the Château d’Assas in Vignan, on the walls of the ancient Buddhist temple of cultural centre The Temple in Beijing (2004), the Maison Louis Carré (gallery owner and collectors) built by Alvar Aalto in Bazoches-sur-Guyonne (Yvelines).
Nathalie Junod Ponsard created permanent and monumental works that can be seen in the public space. In Paris, her principal public and private commissions are – the luminous and monumental work Light Unfolding (2017) integrated to the frontage of the Austerlitz building in Paris, – Persistant Twilight (2010-2020) a public commission made by the state, the French Ministry of Culture and the CNAP for the Place Malraux – L’invisibilité, a permanent commission made by the ENSAV at Versailles to the Centre Pompidou – Phenomenology of Light and Floating (2005 – 2010) and, Étendues latérales (2011) a work for the frontage of the Galerie des Gobelins for the Mobilier National or for « Embellir Paris », Precious brilliance (2019) on the Place de l’Europe – Simone Veil. In Rome, permanent works were created for the Palazzo delle Esposizioni and another monumental for the museo dell’arte contemporanea MACRO.
In September 2021, the artist created a carpet-work of art, Odyssey, commissioned by the Mobilier National for the large staircase of the Palais de l’Élysée; the in situ work seems to unfold under us as if we were stepping on a luminous sensation.
In 2022, the Baudoin Lebon gallery presented the exhibition Figura Serpentinata, in two Acts, including a light installation created in situ in which we have the sensation of ‘dissolving’, accompanied by new works, and in a second Act original glass sculptures. A solo exhibition Solar at the Maison Louis Carré (by Alvar Aalto, Yvelines, France) in which the artist confronts the place with site specific installations and light works renewing the organic and sensitive sensations, like an entry into the future. In Barcelona (Spain), she created the luminous and perennial art work Songe Solaire (Solar Dream) in the bow window of the façade of the new Maison Hermès.