nicolas deshayes wins the bfsp#01

The French artist Nicolas Deshayes is the winner of the first Battaglia Foundry Sculpture Prize 2016, an award for sculpture organized by Fonderia Artistica Battaglia. As an international showcase of emerging creativity, the Prize is an initiative to support excellent artistic practice in the area of bronze sculpture, based on the observation, selection and training of young artists to insert them in the contemporary art system through the production of new works. After in-depth analysis of the five finalist projects on the part of the international Selection Committee, the choice went to the sculptor Nicolas Deshayes (1983, Nancy, France) for his artistic research and technique.

Dear Polyp

Plated bronze, copper water pipes, hot water.

The winning work, which will be made in collaboration with Fonderia Artistica Battaglia, is a patinated bronze sculpture that will be connected by pipes to a water-based system that warms and cools it like a living organism. The wax model for the sculpture will be made starting with a mock-up in polyurethane foam. The wax will be heated and shaped by three-dimensional twists, making it resemble a knotted digestive system or an intestinal Möbius strip. Cast in bronze, the work will be crossed by a flexible hydraulic tube inserted in its cavity and connected by valves to a water boiler, very similar to a standard radiator. The gurgling water passing through the pipes inside the sculpture will quickly heat the metal surface. Bronze, in fact, is an alloy made of 87% copper, a metal that is a good heat conductor. The project is the result of Nicolas Deshayes’ interest in the cycles of matter, organic and inorganic, and the processes involved, from industrial to bodily and vice versa. Deshayes likes to use shapes and materials that can be simultaneously seductive and disturbing. Dear Polyp is a dense sculpture, similar to a tumor but also soft and voluptuous, a reminder of rippling fabrics or the soft forms of Baroque art. The green and gold finish will suggest oxidation or bodily erosion. This proposal is the result of a recent series of works entitled Darling, Gutter, a group of Jesmonite reliefs connected by tubes to the heating system of the gallery. What Nicolas Deshayes wants to create is a sculpture in the round that can be placed indoors or outdoors, where the sudden shifts of temperature can achieve the desired effect.

Download full press release here

Nicolas Deshayes (b.1983, Nancy, France. Lives and works in London).
Nicolas Deshayes studied Sculpture at Chelsea College of Art and Design (2002-2005) and Sculpture at the Royal College of Art (2007-2009).Recent solo exhibitions include Darling, Gutter., Glasgow Sculpture Studios, 2015; Becoming Soil, Jonathan Viner Gallery, London, 2015 and Crude Oil, S1 Artspace, Sheffield, 2013. In 2015 he participated in group exhibitions at Tate St Ives, UK, Fridericianum, Kassel, Leeds City Art Gallery, UK and Koppe Astner, Glasgow. He is currently included in British Art Show 8 at Inverleith House, Edinburgh and his forthcoming solo exhibition opens at Stuart Shave/Modern Art in September.

www.nicolasdeshayes.net
www.modernart.net

SELECTED WORKS