Avec la colline, 2010

Nicolas Alquin  

Born in 1958 in Brussels into a family of artists, Nicolas Alquin, after studying art restoration at the Museum of Folk Arts and Traditions, frequented the workshops of sculptors Reinhoud d'Haese and Etienne Martin. He developed his artistic vocabulary along three main lines: wood (carved directly); beeswax carved and modeled in the mass (sometimes cast in bronze ); and sepia or black ink (for brush washes). Rejecting the precepts of post-minimal sculpture, he develops a practice that intensely reinterprets art history, drawing on both marginal references and the broader history of sculpture. In an ongoing dialogue between the Judeo-Christian heritage and the influence of tribal art on contemporary art, Nicolas Alquin materializes in his works a reflection on the relationships between the visible and the ineffable, the hand and the mind, or even mastery and chance. Thus, he does not hesitate to appropriate so-called "traditional" techniques (direct wood carving first and foremost, bronze chasing) in order to imbue them with diverse influences and place them in a new perspective.

Excerpt from a text by Marc Bembekoff