This is your last week to catch Chromaticism, Brooklyn-based artist Natale Adgnot’s solo exhibition showcasing dazzling three-dimensional works whose vivid colors and shapes—neatly lined slats, clusters of mushrooms, shells, and lily pads—practically leap from the gallery walls.
The exhibit features three ongoing series by Adgnot. Her Sketchbook series began in 2013 when the artist found herself disillusioned with her day job. She picked up a sketchbook and challenged herself to create a sketch a day for 30 days. She enjoyed the creative stimulation so much, she’s continued the daily activity for seven years and has since filled 700 books with black and white ink drawings.
“When I start a sketch I have no idea what I’m going to get,” Adgnot explains. “My whole process is really about putting something down that’s a seed—whether it be a check mark that just feels good physically to make, something that matches the music I’m listening to, the seam on somebody’s purse that I see on the subway, or an object that I find on the ground in a forest—I put down an initial mark.” After putting down that first mark, she then sets rules for herself in completing that particular piece, the only constants being that the drawing must be done in black and white, with no pencil, and on a small page. “Just go directly with the pen. No color, no going back.” She says the activity is similar to a crossword puzzle for her. “I apply those rules for the duration of the sketch and see what comes out."
After working on these sketches consistently for five years, Adgnot says she wanted to take them to another level by creating “a series that had more presence than sketches but retained the same starkness,” so she decided to “bring two-dimensional drawings up to the third dimension.” This series of black and white sculptures called Drawings in Three Dimensions combine her sketchbook drawings with an unexpected material.
The artist had been fascinated with the Shrinky Dinks her daughter played with and wanted to incorporate the morphing material into her work. “There was something inherently graphic and attractive to me about the Shrinky Dinks,” she recalls of the polystyrene plastic that shrinks in size but becomes thicker and harder when baked. The artist collected the scraps her daughter cut out and created shapes and jewelry for herself. She then learned that she could purchase blank artist-grade sheets of the material.
Adgnot draws delicate patterns on the translucent Shrinky Dink material before baking it. When it comes out of the oven she must work quickly while the material is still pliable. She has mere seconds to form the pieces into geometric or flora-like shapes. She then attaches the pieces onto a painted birch panel in intricate dynamic patterns, some suggesting spiraling motion or whirling leaves. These works are not to be viewed from a stationary position. Exciting new discoveries—discreet details, gold enameled edges—can be found in the sculptures when viewed up close and from various vantage points.
Raised in Texas, Adgnot studied graphic design and photography at Sam Houston State University. Shortly after graduating she moved to Paris for ten years where she met her husband and initially worked in graphic design. She later studied haute couture and interned at Chanel and for Felipe Oliveira Baptista. “What I didn’t realize at the time was that when I was working in fashion, I was actually honing my sculptor’s mind,” she says. “I had been such a two-dimensional artist and designer for all those years that making these three-dimensional pieces for the runway—I was actually making pieces out of horse skin and foam and wire—they were really sculptural pieces…and that’s kind of what primed me to later on become a sculptor.”
It was while Adgnot and her family were living in Japan between 2015 and 2018 that she began her Drawings in Three Dimensions series. Since living space there tends to be small and landlords restrict hammering nails into walls to hang art, she had to work on a small scale and create diminutive “objects that people could put on their bookcases,” producing more than "a hundred sculptures that were smaller than a foot by a foot."
It was only at the start of this year that she began working on a larger scale. “Adding scale was a huge step for me,” she says. “This year I started going to three-feet by four-feet. Later in the year I went to four-feet by five-feet.” Having crossed another touchstone in her practice, she’s decided to challenge herself again. “I’ve gone to three dimensions. I’ve gone larger scale. What’s the next logical step? It’s color,” said said.
“When the pandemic hit it became almost inevitable that I had to [add color] because it was almost like fighting against the drab grimness of the year,” she explains of her most recent series, Chromatics. “I ended up choosing the most fluorescent, in-your-face colors. I didn’t want it to be in-between. It’s either black and white or it’s color in your face,” she said of her vibrant palette. For these works, Adgnot paints her substrates in shocking hues. She dips the plastic pieces in matching paint and hangs them to dry or covers them entirely in acrylic paint, creating a textural surface as they shrink in the oven. The vivid hues add an eye-popping exuberance to these pieces.
The musical term chromaticism—"the way musicians add color to their music”—inspired the title of her exhibition. Combining the black keys of a piano—the five chromatic tones—with the white keys of C major, musicians can play the full chromatic scale of 12 tones per octave, adding nuance and emotion to a composition. “They use it for…these really strong emotions that really can’t be evoked with the more basics parts of the scale,” Adgnot explains. “I thought it was a perfect metaphor for what I’ve been doing where I started out with these two-dimensional black and white works, brought them up to the third dimension, and then finally adding color into the mix, like filling in the black keys between the white keys.”
According to the artist, the last work she completed for this exhibition, Reflex Dispersion, “best exemplifies” all three of her series. It features elements of her black and white sketchbook drawings, the three-dimensionality of her monochromatic sculptures, and a surprise burst of color. “When you stand directly in front of it…it almost looks like lines on a white page, so that’s very much like the Drawings in Three Dimensions, but then as you come to the side, you discover this really bright fluorescent yellow where the details meet the substrate.” As with her other sculptures, the work reveals different scenes and experiences when viewed from different angles. “I wanted to have two different approaches with the color,” Adgnot says. “I want it to either be in-your-face color or color that you just discover as you move around it.”
“There’s something satisfying about discovering something in an artwork that’s not readily obvious. If you come up to the piece, at first glance from the front, you see that it’s three-dimensional, but it’s only when you move around that you discover there’s this whole other experience with the bright, bright color,” she said, noting “the joy of discovering” her work embodies. “When you take the time to look at things from other perspectives you can discover that there are several truths. I know it’s cliché but the truth is, there’s something that’s pleasurable about discovering that your initial understanding is not completely right. We like to be tricked.”
Chromaticism by Natale Adgnot
Established Gallery, 75 6th Avenue, Prospect Heights, Brooklyn
Closing reception: Saturday, November 14, 2pm to 5pm
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