Nicolas Alquin

1958, France

Sculptor

BIOGRAPHY

Nicolas Alquin was born in 1958 in Brussels, in a family of artists. After studying art restoration at the museum of Arts et traditions populaires, Paris, he studies with sculptors Reinhoud d’Haese and Etienne Martin.

Since then, he has been developing his own artistic lexicon according to three main vectors: wood (direct carving); bee's wax modeled from the block (sometimes casted in bronze); and black or sepia ink (for wash drawings with brush). Taking backwards the precepts of the post-minimal sculpture, he deploys a practice that replays, with great intensity, the art history, also convening references in the margin of the great sculptural history.

"In an incessant dialogue between the Judeo-Christian iconographic heritage and the influence of primitive sculptures (African as well as Oriental) on contemporary occidental sculpture, Nicolas Alquin materializes through his works a reflection on the relation between the visible and the unspeakable, the hand and the mind, or the mastering and the random. Therefore, he does not hesitate to take over so called traditional techniques (wood direct carving, bronze chiseling) to tint them with various influences and to put them in perspective."

Extract from a text by Marc Bembekoff

He has made several important monuments:

Memorial to the victims of terrorism, Jardin des Invalides, Paris (1997)

Judith, place Albert 1er, Bruxelesm Belgium (1998)

Solitude, First monument to the resistant slaves, Bagneux (2007)

And lately the memorial to the First World War armistice, La paix soit avec toi, Lille ’s Cathedral (2018)

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