For Laurent Nicolas, the function of the object is an essential notion: this obvious fact led him to opt for a course in ceramics at the Olivier de Serres school in Paris, before completing his training at the Duperré school with a higher diploma in applied arts for fashion and the environment. In the wake of this, he developed a furniture program using industrial materials that he diverted from their original use. This is how Laurent Nicolas' creative career as an independent designer began, with the realization of design projects, scenographies and interior design. He collaborates with companies such as Domeau & Pérès, Ecart International, Christophe Delcourt and Collection Particulière, who distribute his pieces in their showrooms and at trade fairs in France and abroad. The discovery of new skills, techniques and materials broadens his creative approach. From design to fashion, his itinerary is based on the same artisanal foundation, both in his furniture projects and in the production of small series or even custom-made objects. For the past fifteen years, Laurent Nicolas has been working as a visual artist, drawing on his many experiences and collaborations. Combining photography, drawing and sculpture, his body of work is distinguished by the hybridization of practices, by the attention paid to the gesture and by the quality of execution of his pieces: as rigorous as it is meticulous, it reflects the total commitment of the artist to the manufacturing process. Laurent Nicolas lives and works between France and Finland.
"Art and craft offer comfort in the face of normative industries and globalised production. Each of these creative fields suggests a return to uniqueness, to gesture, to the work of thought associated with this gesture towards others. Both art and craft are essential and reassuring in our contemporary world."
"I am fully committed to the production of my pieces, like the drawings I make with a slow, meditative gesture, or the ceramic sculptures to which I add ropes after a complex process developed through many experiments. It is important for me to master the gestures and skills required for the conception of my works in order to ensure the quality of their execution."
"Literally the common thread in my work, rope has become a favourite tool in my practice. I appreciate above all its material, but also the multiplicity of its uses and the forms it produces. The transposition of its reticular properties in all fields (biology, mycology, physics, computing, electronics, social, etc.) constitutes for me an infinite source of reflections and inspiration. The rope and its knots, originating from an ancestral gesture, constitute a metaphor of our world by representing the connections between individuals, peoples, times and even places. This fascinating ability to link elements together led me to make my own ropes."
"Very present in my work, ceramics is a technical step and not an end in itself. It is also the vector of the history of our humanity, in which it has been inscribed over the centuries by its everydayness, its specificities and its evolution. This universal medium and its practice have been for me a real discovery, even a revelation, in that it offers a multitude of possibilities of approaches, transformations and results. Ceramics creates a bridge between a liquid state and a mineral world with a whole range of chemical and technical intermediate states."
