Nathanaelle Herbelin

www.nathanaelleherbelin.com

As a painter many things attract me in stage design. Among other things, the theatrical codes of imitation and the simplified representation of space. Like a painter, the stage designer creates a world with objects that can be given new meanings. Like a painter, the stage director creates a situation which can be realistic, or not. I try to dissociate stage design from the stage, to make it exist independently, in order to create a different type of moment.
I’m also drawn to the uncanniness stage designs can give off, simply through composition, lighting, the way elements are placed. I would like each object or set of objects to take on a new meaning – I would like the stage to act as a kind of filter between reality and painting, as it often did for Italian Renaissance painters. Sometimes, I position and stage objects in space (or in my imagination when I don’t have the material resources) before painting them. But it’s important for me to leave a lot of space for the spectators to project themselves into. I consume painting avidly, from every period, but particularly: Velasquez, Manet, Giorgio De Chirico, Giorgio Morandi, Peter Doig, Michael Borremans, Victor Man, Thomas Huber and the painters of the New Schools in Leipzig, Germany and Cluj, Romania.

Nathanaelle  Herbelin exhibited at Griffin Gallery in Selective Memories, as a student of L’ École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Paris.

(Last updated 16.03.2015)

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