Nicolas Deshayes works in sculpture to explore the form and materiality of bodies and what happens below their surfaces. Process, or processing, is the impetus for Deshayes’ sculptures, which manage to convey states of liquid, hardness, hot, cold, and mechanically produced objects and systems. Vital processes of ingestion, and circulation, are evoked by elegantly utilitarian forms. Deshayes’ surfaces are consistently impermeable – recalling the architecture of public amenities. Using predominantly casting methods with bronze, iron, or earthenware, Deshayes tends to seek out artisans and factories who specialise in techniques of production; their historical lineages and geographical particularities converging within his conceptualisation of the work as it develops. Extreme heat is used in these casting processes commonly and the materials rely on changes in temperature in order to come alive. But molten metal rapidly hardens into a solid form, its movement as if suspended in time. Deshayes has recently rendered some of these sculptures functional again, plumbing hot water around a room, or pumping water into public ponds. In his 2016 installation Thames Water, he recast the gallery as an organism by installing a series of interconnected radiators, in doing so concretising an analogy of the body and its systems to the plumbed and networked city. It is in these works that we are reminded of how their organic forms are not only reminiscent of the bodies of humans, but also of domestic, civic and biological circulatory systems.

Nicolas Deshayes was born in Nancy, France, in 1983, and lives and works in Dover, Kent. His work has been the subject of recent solo exhibitions at Modern Art, London (2022); Le Grand Café, Saint-Nazaire (2022); Le Creux de l’Enfer, Thiers (2021); FRAC Grand Large – Hauts-de-France, Dunkirk (2021); E-WERK Luckenwalde (2019); and Tate St Ives (2015). He has participated in recent group exhibitions at Compton Verney, Warwickshire (2024); Stavanger Art Museum (2023); MK Gallery, Milton Keynes (2023); Falmouth Art Gallery (2021); Belgrade Biennale (2020); Ca’Pesaro, Venice (2019); Museion, Bolzano (2019); Frac Ile-de-France, Bussy-Saint-Martin (2018); Mendes Wood DM, Brussels (2017); Drawing Room, London (2017); and Fridericianum, Kassel (2015). In 2014, he was artist-in-residence at Tate St Ives. Deshayes’ works are held by the Arts Council Collection, London; Stavanger Art Museum; Le Centre national des arts plastiques, Paris; FRAC Grand Large – Hauts-de-France, Dunkirk; Mona – Museum of Old and New Art, Hobart; and Tate, London.