Patrick Heide Contemporary Art, LONDON
Exhibition dates: 24 January – 1 March 2025
Levitation, 2025 Site specific installation
The exhibition takes its name from Nathalie Junod Ponsard’s site-specific installation Levitation, which will transform the upstairs gallery into a glowing landscape of movement and colour. Constructed with gel filters placed over the historic Georgian windows, the installation envelops the space in undulating shades of yellow and purple to create a luminous, floating effect. Seemingly defying gravity, this interplay of spatial formations and radiant hues immerses the viewer in a hypnotic, dreamlike environment.
Patrick Heide Contemporary Art is delighted to present Levitation featuring for the first time works of Nathalie Junod Ponsard (b. 1961, France) together with gallery artist Hans Kotter (b. 1966, Germany).
Levitation combines two artists who explore the transformative power of light and colour, examining their ability to redefine our perception of space and challenge our emotional response and sense of orientation. Both artists create immersive experiences that seemingly suspend reality, playing with optical illusions while inviting the viewer to enter a state of visual floating. Together, the works of Junod Ponsard and Kotter present a compelling meditation on levitation as both a physical and metaphysical experience.
The exhibition takes its name from Nathalie Junod Ponsard’s site-specific installation Levitation, which will transform the upstairs gallery into a glowing landscape of movement and colour. Constructed with gel filters placed over the historic Georgian windows, the installation envelops the space in undulating shades of yellow and purple to create a luminous, floating effect. Seemingly defying gravity, this interplay of spatial formations and radiant hues immerses the viewer in a hypnotic, dreamlike environment.
Junod Ponsard’s artistic practice focuses on light as both a medium and an experience, using pure wavelengths to alter sensory perception and recalibrate how we engage with space. Her creations evoke a delicate balance between the familiar and the extraordinary, often leaving viewers in a state of physical rebalancing and emotional wonder. Her art pushes our sensual boundaries, exploring how light interacts with biological systems and inducing psychotropic effects that transcend the visible.
In dialogue with Junod Ponsard’s immersive installation, Hans Kotter presents light objects that sit somewhere between kinetic sculpture, drawing and design and expand on the theme of levitation. Kotter’s works always demonstrate an evolving journey of light and form, weaving formations and fluidity into a narrative of spatial transformation. His minimalistic shapes — circles and squares — create shifting illusions of infinite depth, as if the light itself is levitating and expanding into the three-dimensional space.
Kotter’s practice blends technical precision with natural aesthetics, crafting works that oscillate between artificiality and painterly expression. Using materials such as metal, mirrors, Plexiglas, and LEDs, his objects reflect and refract their surroundings, becoming dynamic extensions of the spaces they inhabit.
In tune with the kinetic “drawing” aspect of Hans Kotter’s pieces, Junod Ponsard presents a recent series of framed works entitled Indéfiniment (Indefinitely), made from strips of gelatin filters that move around when manually turned while constantly refracting the light and reshaping the shadows that surround them.
Nathalie Junod Ponsard has presented her work in numerous prestigious international institutions including Evi-Lichtungen Biennial in Germany (2020), the MOCA in Chengdu, China (2015 and 2014), and the Singapore Art Museum during the Biennale (2001). In France, her site-specific light installations were exhibited at the Pompidou Centre (2005) and the Espace Fondation EDF (2013). Permanent public works include Le dépli de la lumière on the Austerlitz Building (2017), Crépuscule persistant at Place Malraux (2010–2020), and Odyssée, designed for the grand staircase of the Elysée Palace (2021). For the 2024 Olympics she created Le moment magnétique and Voie Lactée for the Athletes’ Village in Saint-Denis.
Hans Kotter’s work has been exhibited widely throughout Europe and the United States and is included in international collections including the Borusan Collection in Istanbul; Kinetica Museum in London; Targetti Light Art Collection in Florence and MAKK Museum für Angewandte Kunst Cologne among others. In 2024 Kotter won the most prestigious German light art prize Deutscher Lichtkunstpreis 2024.
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