With a simple gaze comes the return of pure strength: guided by Christian Bobin, Nicolas Alquin creates a minimalist and mystical pathway of wood within the walls of the Royal Abbey of Fontevraud for the Christmas season. Drinking in every last drop of grace.
Bringing together tree trunks and slabs of wood salvaged from demolition sites, as well as from the Guéré region of Côte d’Ivoire and Apache reservations in Arizona, Alquin carves the trees of the Earth as though celebrating nothingness. His work revolves around an emptiness—that of a boat or a violin—that always leaves room for the other: the visitor, the beholder.
Invited to create an exhibition on the theme of the Nativity at the deconsecrated Royal Abbey of Fontevraud—once a terrifying prison established by Napoleon, which left Jean Genet with “the most profound impression of distress and desolation,” and now restored as the necropolis of the Plantagenet sovereigns and a museum of modern art—the artist, who stands “where everything fades away,” sought to capture graciosa, that beauty felt deep within the soul, to sculpt his Christmas night.
