Chambre froide

Sculptor Nicolas Deshayes works with industrial processes which he goes on to contradict through organic gestures. His sometimes-phantasmagorical formal universe is open to multiple readings, from the mechanisms of domestic objects to mutant bodies. Despite the hardness of his preferred materials – bronze, cast aluminium or ceramic – Nicolas Deshayes produces sculptures in which the sensation of malleability prevails. The body is omnipresent but only in fragments, and we perceive mysterious organic forms, stripped flesh, membranes that suggest skin – the organ of surface and exchange between interior and exterior.
Is it a question of humans, of animals or of hybrid beings in full chrysalis-like metamorphosis? The different scales of his works muddy the waters. Some of them reproduce circulatory systems that can transport water or heat in the image of bodily fluids, while others display the actual porosity of bodies, materials and objects. His equivocal sculpture with multiple sources provokes ambiguous feelings that go from the trivial to the fantastical.