“Turning the precepts of post-minimalist sculpture on their head, Nicolas Alquin deploys a practice that replays the history of art, not without a good measure of intensity, summoning up references both central to and on the margins of the history of sculpture. In an ongoing dialogue between the Judeo-Christian iconographic heritage and the influence of primitive sculpture (African and Eastern alike) on contemporary western art, Nicolas Alquin’s works give concrete form to reflections on the relationship between the visible and the inexpressible, the hand and mind, the controlled and the random. He has no hesitation in appropriating so-called “traditional” techniques (direct carving most of all, along with bronze chiselling) in order to colour them with a variety of influences and put them into perspective.” Marc Bembekoff
“The air is sculpted, and to sculpt is to create air because you remove wood.
Under the microscope, timber is a bundle of tubes.
That’s the great secret: all woods are organs.
There’s room for you, in them.” Nicolas Alquin
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES
Nicolas ALQUIN
BELGIUM
Born into a family of artists in Brussels in 1958, and after studying artwork restoration at the Museum of Popular Arts and Traditions, Nicolas Alquin was a frequent visitor to the studios of sculptors Reinhoud d’Haese and Etienne Martin. He developed his own artistic lexicon in accordance with three main vectors: wood (direct carving); beeswax cut and shaped directly from the mass (and sometimes cast in bronze); and sepia or black ink (for washes).