Pierre-Alix Nicolet

Pierre-Alix Nicolet was born in Vesoul France in 1991. He lives and works in Carrara Italy.

Nicolet started studying stone carving in Burgundy in 2009. The experience working with the material and, in particular, his work with architectural elements awakened his interest in art. He then took a two-year journey in South America living for several months in contact with an indigenous tribe in the Amazon. Upon returning to Europe, he studied at the Carrara Academy of Fine Arts.

His time with the indigenous tribe changed many of Nicolet’s perceptions. He discovered a relationship with the natural world based on the idea that every earthly element participates in a shared network of intelligences. He sees decay not as loss or erasure but a place of reorganization and regeneration. In his art, Nicolet explores how even fragmented or evolving forms may assume new meaning according to their surroundings.

For his sculptural works in glass, he first creates the sculpture in gesso. He then photographs the sculpture in varied exposures so they seem fragmented; this allows him to create multiple layers of depth in the photos. The photographs are then printed on several sheets of glass. The sheets of glass are assembled one in front of the other; the resulting effect is the three-dimensionality of the sculpture within the layers of glass.

In his charcoal drawings, Nicolet often draws an image on top of another while still allowing the earlier drawing to emerge. Sometimes the drawings are fragmented and reassembled, reanimating the image. In others, the image seems to have faded way with only slight traces of what was. For all the drawings however, although two-dimensional, there is a very sculptural sensation.