Natalie Rich

A practice between matter, image and space

Natalie Rich-Fernandez lives and works in Ibiza. Her practice is multidimensional, painting, video, ceramics, sculpture and installation, driven by a steady curiosity for materials and languages.

A graduate of the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris (1990, atelier Michel Gemignani, painting), she first showed her paintings in the Parisian galleries Simone Kervern and Véronique Smagghe, then broadened her practice to video and photograms, presented at Paris Photo, in Arles, at the MEP and at the Galerie de la FNAC. Represented in Paris by Galerie Acte 2, she took part in digital-art festivals such as VideoFormes in Clermont-Ferrand; her video-art piece Mollusc (2002) was widely broadcast on Arte, Canal+ and Pink TV.

Her works are held in prestigious public and private collections, including the Maison Européenne de la Photographie in Paris and the FNAC collection. She exhibits regularly at Hervé Van der Straeten's; some of her paintings have been acquired and shown at Roger Vivier boutiques. The Maison Hermès acquired one of her paintings, which became the Carré Marcelina in their Carré d'Artiste series.

For about a decade, Natalie Rich has devoted part of her work to ceramics: sculpture and installations in public spaces. She sculpts lamps, stools, bedside tables and ceramic totems, and created a black-ceramic alphabet shown in Madrid for the reopening of the legendary Commodore restaurant (formerly Maïté Commodore).

Over time, she has built her own vocabulary of forms, where wood and ceramic answer one another. Everything used in the making enters the work: the wooden panel on which she cuts her ceramic elements receives a colour, a drawing, and stays, fixed by the artist, then reused as a canvas for the next composition. Manufacturing accidents are accepted and become part of the piece.

In 2023 she installed a monumental 400 × 240 cm wood-and-ceramic work in the lobby of the Teranka hotel in Formentera. The same year she took part in El Gozo, a Paris group show of Spanish artists curated by Sarah Suco Torres and Nicolas Dewavrin. In 2025 she produced a striking 8 × 3.75 m installation for the library of Soho House Ibiza.

In 2018 she co-founded Galeria Tambien in Ibiza with her husband Jorge Fernandez, where they present 20th-century furniture alongside artists they champion.