Alain Nahmias, a singular artist

Born in Paris in 1959, Alain Nahmias has been established since the 1990s as a captivating figure of Art Singulier in France. Self-taught, enthusiast of Art Brut, he puts together from one exhibition to the next an imaginary gallery following the current of his forays into our “global village”, reinterpreting Native American, African or Inuit cultures through his vegetable matter sculptures. Over time he has put everything to use to this end: scraps of fabric both plain and ornate, fur, crow and ostrich feathers, rusty nails or bones unearthed from the garbage bins of our cities; painted wood or branches riddled with woodworm; raffia or dried sunflowers.

For the last 15 years he has ceaselessly wanted to plunge into the original sources of art in this way, to reach what he calls the “delta of shamanism”. At this act of birth in the prehistoric caves, the first “works of art” were brought forth in a state of trance in order, as we know today, to subdue the supernatural forces that more or less governed our lives.

Far from the turbulence of contemporary art that is at times fleeting or futile, the timeless sculptures of Alain Nahmias thus seem to traverse the ages to retrieve for us the primitive echoes of an “art” whose spiritual and cultural necessities remain forever buried in our collective memory.

The work of Alain Nahmias reveals a contemporary return to sources, at once humble and salutary …

Alain Nahmias practices zazen in the Paris Dojo.