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ETUDE HV11

2011

Nicolas SANHES

Sculpture

Nicolas Sanhes studied at the Perpignan School of Fine Arts in France. After creating his first wooden sculpture, his preferred material became metal, and for a few years now more precisely the metal beams used in the construction of frames: a standardized and industrial material called IPN. The artist saws, assembles and welds these metal lines, works on the tensions, the notions of balance and imbalance, in order to give birth to works of an astonishing lightness, in spite of their often monumental quality. For the work is not limited to a constantly renewed declination of metal linear structures, always monochromic. The work is also space itself: the interior space, the void encompassed in the created structure, and the space in which the work exists.

Nicolas SANHES

France

Born in 1965

Born in 1965 in Rodez, France.
Lives and works in France.

In 1984, Nicolas Sanhes enrolled in the Beaux-Arts of Perpignan and discovered his first museum, the Musée de Céret. During his studies, he was drawn to the radical propositions of artists such as Ellsworth Kelly and Ad Reinhardt that push the internal contradictions of art to their extreme. The plastic material of his first years was tar. This exploration led him straight to sculpture and the elaboration of radical art forms. These turn questions into the subject of the work. Little by little, Nicolas Sanhes extended his practice to drawing and painting in order to widen his creative scope: “Painting grounds me in my work,” explains the artist. “I make, on my own, big sculptures. It’s physical, long, laborious, exhausting work, so I started painting again because it’s intellectually refreshing.”