Frédérique Nalbandian
Frédérique Nalbandian is a French multidisciplinary artist born on 3 April 1967 in Menton. A sculptor, she also creates drawings, installations and performances. Most of her in situ soap sculptures evolve both internally and externally, changing over time. Sometimes interactive, they require the visitor's participation.
After taking her first drawing courses during her studies at Davis High School (en) in California, Frédérique Nalbandian entered the Ecole Nationale d'Art Décoratif d'Aubusson in 1988, where she spent a year, before entering the Ecole Nationale Supérieure d'Art in Villa Arson in 1989 to devote herself to artistic creation. In 1994, she obtained an artistic residency dedicated to drawing at the Fondazione Ratti in Como under the direction of Anish Kapoor and Karel Appel. In 1996, she obtained the Diplôme National Supérieur d'Expression Plastique (DNSEP).
She sculpts soap, carving it or modelling it. Its different states: solid, liquid, foam, effervescence, dripping, stalactitisation derive from the action of water.
In her works she also uses poor materials such as plaster (in the mouldings and plastered roses), water, fabric, wool threads, glass and terracotta.
She moulds soap, shapes it and creates forms that she stops or lets evolve, transforming time into a medium. Her vocabulary of plastic forms is constantly expanding: precipitates, collapses, rolls, fragments, columns, partitions, walls, ropes or directly related to the anatomy of the human body: ears, brains, skins, skulls, hands, phalluses. Some were imposed by the material itself. Her forms, in their composition and the process they undergo, become poetic, charged with a metaphysics of matter that evokes the passage of time, erosion, transformation and metamorphosis. The allusion to Francis Ponge's text “Le Savon” was decisive from the outset and took shape during a series of talks in Cerisy during the Contemporary Writer's Workshops in 2015, where she met Pascal Quignard.
![Frédérique Nalbandian, Panacée I,II,III, 2021, Marseille soap and textiles, 180 x 89 x 64 cm (details)]()
![Frédérique Nalbandian, Panacée I,II,III, 2021, Marseille soap and textiles, 180 x 89 x 64 cm]()
After taking her first drawing courses during her studies at Davis High School (en) in California, Frédérique Nalbandian entered the Ecole Nationale d'Art Décoratif d'Aubusson in 1988, where she spent a year, before entering the Ecole Nationale Supérieure d'Art in Villa Arson in 1989 to devote herself to artistic creation. In 1994, she obtained an artistic residency dedicated to drawing at the Fondazione Ratti in Como under the direction of Anish Kapoor and Karel Appel. In 1996, she obtained the Diplôme National Supérieur d'Expression Plastique (DNSEP).
She sculpts soap, carving it or modelling it. Its different states: solid, liquid, foam, effervescence, dripping, stalactitisation derive from the action of water.
In her works she also uses poor materials such as plaster (in the mouldings and plastered roses), water, fabric, wool threads, glass and terracotta.
She moulds soap, shapes it and creates forms that she stops or lets evolve, transforming time into a medium. Her vocabulary of plastic forms is constantly expanding: precipitates, collapses, rolls, fragments, columns, partitions, walls, ropes or directly related to the anatomy of the human body: ears, brains, skins, skulls, hands, phalluses. Some were imposed by the material itself. Her forms, in their composition and the process they undergo, become poetic, charged with a metaphysics of matter that evokes the passage of time, erosion, transformation and metamorphosis. The allusion to Francis Ponge's text “Le Savon” was decisive from the outset and took shape during a series of talks in Cerisy during the Contemporary Writer's Workshops in 2015, where she met Pascal Quignard.
