Nicolas Kennett. "Incanto" or the enchantment of an outbreak.
Discover a set of 40 unpublished works (oil paintings on wood panel and unique enamelled terracotta sculptures) by the English artist Nicolas Kennett. "Nicolas Kennett revisits the organic through painted and sculpted material. He oscillates between the dullness of oil painting on raw wood panel which captures and retains the light and the shine of bright, shiny and sophisticated enamel sculptures. In contrast, Nicolas Kennett brings out visions of transformations, incarnations, mysterious mutations. How does the human mind revisit animals and plants? Why does it venture on This path? Each work is an outbreak, like a revelation to oneself, the incarnation of a spirituality, the materialization of a great diversity of interior journeys through the materials shaped by the hand of the artist.
'Enchantment of the material: matt or shiny, harsh or smooth, intense or light, thick or barely perceptible, pasty or largely modeled, rugged or even absent ... seductive or repulsive, attractive or disturbing. It also leaves a great place to the void, to the ellipse, in silence ... free of interpretation. What is it trying to convey? The artist plays on the diversity of media in the service of the spirit which transforms them and orients them to deliver their essence. What is the vital impetus that springs from this flower?
What hint of humanity can be seen in the eyes of this seal? Nicolas Kennett invites us to explore our own imaginations by strewing our path with clues, to consider our own projections in the face of revisited organic forms, to let operate the magic linked to the reinterpretation of animal, plant and organic life forms to better merge with them and finally perceive ourselves as a part of the whole. He gives us the spectacle of our humanity projected onto the kingdom of the living in order to create an echo in each of us, in order to make us feel the life that exists in them and vibrate at their tempo, in order to recognize them as ourselves.
It is an ode to life ... to nature and its emanations, to its magical and sacred dimension, trivial and brutal, literal and chilling, relentless and extraordinary, source of astonishment and fascination, hoping perhaps to be that we will know how to protect it, and therefore also preserve ourselves ... "
- Claire Corcia, December 2021
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