Grand Prix – Contemporary Creation Call 2010

Creation – Nicolas Buffe, French artist born in 1978, living and working in Japan (Tokyo). Weaving – Patrick Guillot, Aubusson Porcelain – CRAFT Center for Research on Fire and Earth Arts, Limoges Low-warp tapestry (body), cotton warp, wool and silk weft – Porcelain (head and hooves)

“By assembling, gluing, and mixing figures from both popular and scholarly culture, I make the most eloquent associations possible, following my pleasure. This dialogue between past and present, deeply embedded in my work, is all about amusement.”

“As a child in the 1980s, the cultural atmosphere in which I was immersed was strongly influenced by Japanese imagery from manga and video games on one hand, and the imprint left by American cartoons on the other. By using these elements, I refer to a vocabulary that has a very broad, even universal scope.”

In the Late Middle Ages, the unicorn was a symbol of Christ. The animal is invincible to hunters, except when trapped through cunning by being tamed with the help of a young virgin. Here, as in the series of ancient tapestries The Hunt of the Unicorn held at The Cloisters in New York, the hunters and their dogs track and kill the animal with a lance to the heart in order to reveal its immortal and pure nature.