The Sandra and Giancarlo Bonollo Foundation for Contemporary Art opens its fall exhibition season with a solo show of French artist Nicolas Deshayes. The exhibition will be on view from Sept. 13 to Nov. 1, 2025 in the spaces of theformer Chiesa delle Dimesse, in Thiene, in the province of Vicenza. The opening is scheduled for Saturday, Sept. 13, at 4:30 p.m.
Born in Nancy in 1983, Deshayes is an artist whose research revolves around sculpture, interpreted along two lines: organic gestures on the one hand, and an industrial vocation involving materials and production processes of technical and artisanal origin on the other. His work focuses on the body, understood as a physical and material entity, and on what happens inside it, below the visible surface. His works oscillate between the tangible dimension of matter and the altered perception of recognizable elements, opening up to multiple and sometimes ambiguous readings.
Since his beginnings, Deshayes has conducted a wide-ranging investigation into the expressive possibilities offered by even very distant materials: bronze, cast iron, expanded polyurethane and glazed ceramic are just some of the media he uses. His approach is based on constant experimentation, supported by collaboration with artisans and specialized companies, from which he learns techniques and production languages that he reinserts within a personal artistic path. His works also include interventions that take on the appearance of casts or models, generating forms that reflect a reality at once familiar and transfigured.
Since 2017, the artist has lived and worked in Dover, Kent, but maintains a constant relationship with Italy, where she has found new insights for her practice. Among the places that have most influenced his work is Nove, a center known for ceramic production since the 18th century. It was in this Vicenza town that Deshayes deepened his knowledge of local craft techniques, interweaving ancient knowledge and formal experimentation. The link with the Vicenza area, cultivated over the years through visits and collaborations, takes shape for the first time in the exhibition at the Fondazione Bonollo, which represents an important stage in his journey.
Twelve recent works made of glazed earthenware, a ceramic material used by the artist to evoke natural suggestions and hybrid forms, will be on display within the exhibition. Some sculptures are inspired by elements of the natural world such as the sun, clouds and shells, while other works evoke a more dreamlike or distorted dimension, where everyday objects are transfigured in surreal ways. There is no shortage of works that take on the appearance of casts, evoking an ambiguous, almost inverted reality, where the recognition of forms becomes an uncertain and partial exercise.
Thiene’s solo show is developed in dialogue with Deshayes’ current exhibition at London’s Modern Art Gallery. Both venues present a selection of works made by the artist over the past year, albeit with some variations in individual arrangements. The temporal overlap of the two exhibitions, one in the English context and the other in the Italian one, helps to delineate the international trajectory of Deshayes’ research, which is increasingly oriented toward a reflection on matter, landscape and the body across distinct geographical and cultural experiences.
The critical text accompanying the exhibition is signed by Kyla MacDonald, a curator attentive to the languages of contemporary sculpture who is already involved in the promotion of emerging and established artists internationally. Her intervention helps to frame Deshayes’ works in the current panorama, highlighting their formal complexity and material references.
With the exhibition, the Bonollo Foundation confirms its orientation toward artistic programming that is open to international comparison and centered on the enhancement of contemporary practices, with particular attention to the dialogue between art, territory and material languages. Active for years in supporting research projects and solo exhibitions of Italian and foreign artists, the Foundation stands as a cultural crossroads in the heart of the Veneto region, maintaining a constant dialogue with the European art scene.
The Foundation’s exhibition venue, the former Chiesa delle Dimesse, represents a significant element in the overall project: it is a space characterized by a strong architectural identity, which contributes to redefining the relationship between the works and their surroundings. Deshayes’ installations, designed to dialogue with the specificities of the place, are grafted into a context rich in historical and symbolic stratifications, amplifying the tensions between natural and artificial, visible and hidden.
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| Nicolas Deshayes opens the fall season at the Bonollo Foundation in Thiene, Vicenza, Italy. |
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