Fabien Mérelle projects his body into a universe where everything intertwines—animal, plant, and mineral—where bark gnaws at the skin, where man resembles beasts. It is a world where there is no longer any law of gravity, propriety, or taboo. From these settings emerge detailed scenes, with the sheet or material serving as a receptacle for the author’s thoughts, desires, and anxieties. Mérelle’s drawings and sculptures plunge us, with irony, into a phantasmagoric world of dreamlike and hybrid figures, blending the animal and human realms. His intimate works, imbued with ultra-realism and fantasy, are inspired both by the surrounding world and his emotional landscape. Sculpting the improbable in a realistic manner, he reveals the hidden side, an alternate reality where Greek myths and ancestral beliefs intertwine. The burlesque compositions often mock the artist’s torments without diminishing their gravity: Mérelle’s visual and linguistic allegories serve as an outlet that allows him to channel his emotions and tame his fears.
“For Strange Tree, there were supposed to be arms, but it conveyed too much, it no longer suggested anything. I was unsettled. It seemed obvious to me that this silhouette had to remain as it was. Without its arms, I felt its powerlessness, and I recalled that in Hinduism, the worst reincarnation is that of a tree, and I accepted that this work had to speak of that incapacity. It is a harsh work, and at first, I wanted to mask that. Then I thought of Giacometti, all in length, I thought of Zoran Music, which are nothing but screams. (…) This sculpture is a totem; it reminds me of those Roman busts that have so deeply influenced me, those in the Villa Borghese. It was these busts that made me want to sculpt. I am Roman through my mother, and often my father, when we encountered one of these ancient works, would remind me that they were my ancestors, that we shared the same features, the same hooked nose. When I saw Strange Tree without its arms, I thought of that and told myself that this trunk was the submerged part of our being, the part made up of all those who brought us to where we are.” - Fabien Mérelle
Presented by By Lara Sedbon
