Nadia Naveau at Base-Alpha

Artist: Nadia Naveau

Exhibition title: I Spy With My Little Eye …

Venue: Base-Alpha, Antwerp, Belgium

Date: May 14 – July 7, 2016

Photography: We Document Art, all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and Base-Alpha, Antwerp

“I spy with my little eye” unravels the chronology of looking. The figure that lays draped on the floor directs our gaze as we enter, seemingly unravelling itself in pieces. As the viewer walks past, perspective shifts, making the sculpture stretch and reconfigure to what appears as a “readable whole”. Nadia Naveau’s imagery arches and conjugates in space. In her sculptural collages, detached elements overlap and seemingly accidentally come together until the pieces literally fall into place. When talking about her work, Nadia’s hands imitate the shapes that inhabit the gallery, and fortuitous anecdotes of assembly accumulate. With an ever peering eye for color, texture and composition, she sculpts our perception. Her Fingerspitzengefühl and spy eye mingle with reference-carrying elements, until these constructions and dense figures are able to stand by themselves. The creation process seems elongated in the viewer, who remains puzzled and surprised seeing technical skill borrowing its hands to strong intuition.

Inspired by Goya’s fresco’s, painterly patches move around freely in strong compositions. As if to sharpen all perceptive buds, her shapes contort our expectation of scale and perspective. Small found drawings are blown up and get three dimensions in a confusing set up of spaciousness and representation. A similar play occurs in mirroring surfaces, basreliëfs and in a sculpture that swirls around its own axis. It is as if Oskar Schlemmer softly breathes on in Naveau’s stylised, partly geometrical characters and in the play with theatrical dimensions. Though a pedestal often functions as a decorative support for a sculpture, Nadia elevates it to being part of the work. In the second space of the gallery she pushes it even further with sculptures that embody their own background. Little arena’s for color bring together play and precision, making the construction of an image tangible in yet another way.

In assemblage of found and sculpted material, Nadia Naveau reflects sculptures and viewers in a game of “I spy with my little eye…”.

– Céline Mathieu, 2016