Noémie Goudal’s practice investigates the complexity of man’s precarious evolving relationship with the natural world, and our quest for an understanding of our place in the universe that stretches from ancient times to modernity. Goudal’s work belongs to a category of artists who view aesthetic beauty as a bi-product of intellectual engagement. Temporally ambivalent and territorially uncertain, Goudal inspires a new reading of nature’s adaptability in this age.
Through the construction of staged sets, and the use of models made of paper, mirrors and wood, Goudal’s oeuvre brings real and imagined geographies into a mysterious synchronicity that gives a new perspective on the issue. These material interventions are critical to the artist’s production of meaning – usually taking the form of photography, the documentation of these interventions in the landscape challenges our definitions or artificiality and our ability to reconcile an ever-changing intellectual conception of the “natural world” with the world as it is in itself. There is always a deliberate imperfection present in Goudal’s work, whether to do with page edges or cracked mirrors; an element of fragmentation serves the subtle visual motif for the instability that characterises the op-posing views of man and his relationship to nature. This technique can be viewed as a means for Goudal to document the process of deconstruction inherent in this volatile relationship. By doing so she presents the possibility of viewing this issue through a different gaze. The viewer is rendered complicit with the illusion presented by the image, whilst simultaneously made aware of its mechanics.