An overview of Nicolas Deshayes' work over a decade.
This monograph follows a trilogy of solo exhibitions that took place between 2021 and 2022 at Frac Grand Large – Hauts-de-France (Dunkirk), Le Creux de l'Enfer (Thiers) and Le Grand Café (Saint-Nazaire), a partnership that provided a unique opportunity to showcase Deshayes' work in France for the first time.
Beyond these three exhibitions, this book offers a further opportunity to journey through the various bodies of work that Deshayes has been developing over the last decade. This volume shows how Deshayes sets out to reappropriate industrial means of production through the use of artisanal techniques and chemical reactions that make each of his works unruly and unique. When the artist casts metal, melts plastic or models clay, he introduces accidents, producing surfaces and organic bulges that manifest hybrid forms. From his colour-anodised aluminium works to his cast-iron radiator sculptures or fountains formed by the sensuous swelling of expanding foam, to vacuum-formed reliefs, ceramics and his most recent series of bronzes "Gargouilles", Deshayes uses sculpture to explore the relationship between bodies, materials and the fluidity of identity.
Born in France in 1983, Nicolas Deshayes studied at Chelsea College of Art and Design and the Royal College of Art in London before moving to Dover in Kent. A creator of installations, sculptures, bas-reliefs and images, Nicolas Deshayes is interested in circulation systems, domestic piping, mass production and craft processes.
Deshayes has developed a multi-faceted aesthetic language that sits between two different ways of making: the organic gesture and industrial production. He operates at the threshold of liquid and solid, attentive to the significance of materials as well as to their physical reactions. His works meld the bodily with the mechanics of domestic objects, bringing them together in a relationship that is imbued with ambiguity and humour.
Edited by Sophie Auger-Grappin, Catalogue Général, Nicolas Deshayes.
Texts by Sophie Auger-Grappin, Nicolas Deshayes, Cédric Fauq, Laura McLean-Ferris.
