The Details in Metaphor: A Conversation with Natale Adgnot at Sweet Lorraine Gallery NYC

 Natale Adgnot, Life Cycle of a Bird Brain, Sweet Lorraine Gallery, New York, NY. Photo Paul Takeuchi

By CARLOTA GAMBOA September 20, 2024

Natale Adgnot is a Franco-American multimedia artist who is invested in pushing the boundaries of perception. By exploring logical fallacies and the shortcomings of human assumption through her abstract fiber sculptures, Natale delves into the failures of everyday biases. Raised in Texas, the graphic designer-turned-3D-creator spoke with me about her artist career, the different materials that punctuate her work, and how they are representative of her life’s various chapters.

Despite the lack of access to an art education, Adgnot was still able to find a mode of expression that satiated her curiosity. She’d known she wanted to be an artist from a young age, but her family was resistant to the idea, resulting in the pursuit of alternative routes which now richly texture the sculptures she makes today. Moving to France after undergrad, Adgnot worked as a graphic and web designer for several years. However, burnout took a toll on her, and so she moved on to fashion design, where an internship with haute couture designer Felipe Oliveira Baptista often found her working on the fabrication of hats and other accessories. The experience built yet another foundational relationship to a different medium, using different materials.

Natale Adgnot, Life Cycle of a Bird Brain, Sweet Lorraine Gallery, photo Paul Takeuchi 

By the time Adgnot moved back to the United States in 2009, she had a French family in tow (and perhaps certain French sensibilities as well). “I was nervous about having my own studio,” she admits, “but it felt like if there’s ever a good time, it’s now.” So she began painting. Her past experience with graphic design fortified the practice but it wasn’t until she started experimenting with textiles that things started to come to life. That’s when her personal histories coalesced together into a practice that felt like “coming home.” Before she knew it, she was traveling to Tokyo for research on one of her earlier projects. The 2017 series, Drawings in Three Dimensions, is a take on pareidolia, and aims to invite the viewer to place their own interpretations on the abstracted figures. Reflective of Japanese minimalism, the shapes resemble microscopic minerals and molecular forms.

Adgnot’s projects have always been interested in juxtaposing objective facts with the subjective experience of personal feelings. She calls it, “The squishy against the hard. My work integrates a lot of research, and it’s important for me that each detail has a reason for being there, that every detail has a supporting claim.” And this tension is seen at play in her work.

Natale Adgnot, Life Cycle of a Bird Brain, Sweet Lorraine Gallery, Photo_ Paul Takeuchi 
 

Besides the use of research itself as a raw material, Adgnot’s sculptures rely on the manipulation of thermoplastics (colloquially known as Shrinky-Dink) colored with acrylic paint. Once they are heated down into their final form, they are then adhered to wall-mounted panels, and layered with different additional materials: horse hair, found objects, fabric, ink, paper, or tatami grass. These supplementary extras are libraries that speak to—and form—her past. While Adgnot’s background in graphic design informs her aesthetic and mode of rendering, tailoring is also a huge part of her process. She mentions that “working with the fabric without the constraint of the human body is like discovering a whole new material.” From the horse hair, reflective of her mother’s profession as a horse-trainer and her work at Chanel, to the fragrant rush grass that is used to make tatami mats, the materials in her work become autobiographical, embodying not only her sensibilities as an artist, but representing a visual language as to how she arrived there.

Natale Adgnot, Life Cycle of a Bird Brain, Sweet Lorraine Gallery, photo Paul Takeuchi 
 

However, Adgnot’s use of metaphor is multivalent. Her current project, entitled Life Cycle of a Bird Brain, not only behaves as a culmination of the adjacent phases of Adgnot’s artistic journey, but relishes on her play with language. The exhibition, on view at Sweet Lorraine Gallery until the 29th of September in NYC, features 14 pieces that have all taken inspiration from the idiomatic language of birds, and attempts to reflect some of the more absurd aspects of how people think and communicate. “The titles were the real genesis. At first there were about 15-20 phrases I was thinking about using, narrowing down as I went.” Adgnot leaned into the bird expressions since she found so much fallibility in the multiplicity of meanings. What does a bird brain aim to describe, and couldn’t it change based on who you asked?

The biggest wall sculpture in the show, entitled Swan Song, was always set up to be the grand finale. However, it’s not the only swan in her Bird Brains series. The pieces Black Swan Intersection, Black Swan Theory, and Black Swan Theory 2, add their weight to the conversation. Though they all vary in shape and tone, the three pieces are tied together with their fin-like protrusions and gradient-shifts in the background. The Swan Theory, coined when Dutch explorers found black swans in Australia, describes what was once considered to be impossible. Perhaps these three pieces can be seen as emblems; Adgnot breaking past her own expectations. 

Natale Adgnot, Birds of a Feather Flock Together, Acrylic, thermoplastic, wire, tulle, cotton organdy on panel, 24 x 36 x 8 in. Photo Paul Takeuchi
 

As someone dedicated to innovating materials, it’s no surprise Adgnot would take up the challenge of working with processes that not many people are playing with at the moment, like thermoplastic. But even the more traditional materials she incorporates find ways of defamiliarizing themselves when included in her pieces. Don’t Count Your Chickens Before They Hatch, another piece in the solo exhibition, was created from 49 textile nests made by hand with wire. The work, affixed to chicken wire structures suspended from the ceiling to the floor, straddles the line between sculpture and installation, and marks the beginning of a move more toward site specific work.

“Having several layers of material on the pieces,” she says, “it can be hard to notice the layers of feathers glued onto the panel, or the fabric layered on top of that. I want the shift in opacity and shadows to add depth and interest in the details.”

Adgnot will be giving an artist talk at Sweet Lorraine Gallery on Saturday, September 21st, from 2:00pm to 3:00 pm. The exhibition is on view through September 29, 2024. WM

To learn more about Adgnot and her work, please visit her website and follow her on Instagram @natale_adgnot