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Agnès Varda Courtyard Galleries

J. Fabien Mérelle

"L’arbre au corps"

published at 02/02/2021
L'arbre au corps, exposition de Fabien Mérelle au Domaine de Chaumont-sur-Loire, 2021 - © Éric Sander

“In my quest for realism down to the tiniest, unfathomable detail, I pushed meticulousness to extremes and lost track of the recreational aspect of drawing. The drawing we did just to fill the time, to satisfy an urge. The drawing that in just several strokes of a pen, could tell more than a six year old could say with words. I attempted to resume these lines that had been interrupted by time, without ruining them, and the goodwill of the child I was back then. I wanted the voices and writing to blend together, combining the high-pitched and the deep, the delicate and the heavy. In these kaleidoscopic relics, I was looking for gaps with a story to tell, silences full of questions. I wasn’t looking for a confrontation, a before and after. Using a misleading childish style would have been just as pointless. I dreamt of an exchange, a conversation in drawings. Revisiting childhood would be opening a pandora’s box of early worries and fears, it would be plunging into a mythology we had dreamt up in our dark bedroom, at bedtime. A mythology we had tried to flee upon the appearance of the hair and onset of puberty and the rest. But, instead of disappearing, it had come alive in my drawings, a theatre of conflict and desires, no holding back, now considered the tamed reality.” Fabien Mérelle

“Work meticulously to make the impossible, possible”: these are Fabien Mérelle’s words, to describe the way he draws. The artist likes to take as much time over these drawings as possible, adding details until he achieves an impressive level of realism.
Even though the situations he portrays place humans at the heart of an imaginary world, full of dreams and metaphors: body mutations, animality, feelings of dizziness with intriguing scenes that almost always take place on a white, infinite background.
 
The character that appears wearing pyjamas in his artworks is the artist himself, depicting personal situations that he likes to recount through enigmas, fragments of a family history, an intimate narrative which is also our own story. This omnipresent void thus becomes a place for the viewer, who is invited to use his imagination, and conceptualise his own story.
When Fabien Mérelle’s drawings take the form of a sculpture, this is to express a link, as with the fragments of physical contact that he exhibited in 2017 in Hong Kong, accounts of tender moments spent with his father. Through his artworks, we witness both fragility and strength, always centred around the human.

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES

Fabien MÉRELLE
FRANCE
 
 

Fabien Mérelle was born in 1981 in Fontenay-aux-Roses. He lives and works between Tours and Paris. In 2005, he was awarded a grant to study at the Xi’an Academy of Fine Arts, in China. He was already passionate about the art of drawing and during his time in China, he worked on Indian ink techniques.

In 2006 he graduated from the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. In 2007, he became a member of Casa Velasquez in Madrid, and stayed there for a year. In 2008, he held his first solo exhibition at the Premier Regard Gallery. In 2010, he was the first winner of the Canson prize. He was added to the Beaubourg collections in 2012, thanks to a Guerlain donation.

His artworks drawn in black ink and watercolour found their meaning and inspiration in a scene that was cruel, ironic yet tender, from his own personal life, his loved ones. His drawings tell the story of a single character, always the same one, dressed in blue striped pyjama bottoms and a white t-shirt.

Fabien Mérelle uses his own body in this artistic world where everything blends together as one, animal, plant and mineral. Where tree bark cuts the skin, where man is likened to animals. A world where the laws of gravity, decorum and taboos no longer exist. He uses the white of paper, which holds a strong presence. From these empty sets emerge detailed scenes, as if the paper were a receptacle collecting the author’s thoughts, desires, worries. Drawing far-fetched ideas in a realistic way, the flip-side of the decor, another reality where Greek mythology and ancestral beliefs come together.

His drawing follows his life and speaks of a man who loves, who is afraid, who becomes a father. He takes inspiration from everywhere, from the works of artists he admires, images he comes across by accident, words that haunt him. They are haikus in the form of drawings, a graphic existence.
His work has travelled. To Hong Kong, in 2012, where Fabien Mérelle exhibited a monumental 5-metre-high sculpture, made from one of his drawings, at Statue Square. In 2015, to the Drawing Centre in New York. To Melbourne, for an exhibition celebrating the 500-year anniversary of La Mélancolie by Albrecht Dürer. To Madrid, Geneva, Brussels, Istanbul, Jakarta, Seoul, Singapore, Taiwan and Beijing.
 

His work is represented in Paris at the Praz Delavallade Gallery, in Hong Kong by Édouard Malingue, in Madrid by Michel Soskine, in Geneva at the Wilde Gallery Geneva and in Antwerp at the Keteleer Gallery.

AWARDS

2010
Prix Canson
 
2007
Prix Keskar de la Fondation de France
 
2006
Prix de dessin Diamond
 
2003
Prix de dessin David-Weill
Complete Biography

SOLO EXHIBITIONS

2020
Faire corps avec la nature, Chapelle de la Visitation Contemporary Art Center, Thonon-les-Bains, France
 
2019
Édouard Malingue Gallery, Hong Kong
Voies de têtes, Keteleer Gallery, Antwerp, Belgium
Abri, pierre, bois, encre, papier, CCC OD, Tours, France
 
2018
Traversé(e), Praz-Delavallade, Paris, France
 
2017
Michel Soskine Gallery, Madrid, Spain
New Works, Project room, Praz-Delavallade, Los Angeles, USA
 
2016
Étreindre, Édouard Malingue Gallery, Hong Kong
Reconstruire, Art Bärtschi & Cie, Geneva, Switzerland
 
2014
Praz-Delavallade, Paris, France
 
2013
Espace Art Contemporain, La Rochelle, France
Elles et moi, Édouard Malingue Gallery, Hong Kong
 
2012
Praz-Delavallade, Paris, France
 
2010
Slick 10 - Contemporary Art Fair (Solo Booth), Fonds Canson pour l’Art et le Papier, Paris, France
Dibujos, Michel Soskine Gallery, Madrid, Spain
Jean Roch Dard Gallery, Paris, France
282 / 210 mm, Guy Bartschi Gallery, Geneva, Switzerland
 
2009
Fabien, Jean Roch Dard Gallery, Paris, France
 
2008
Premier Regard Gallery, Paris, France

GROUP EXHIBITIONS

2021
Keteleer Gallery, Antwerp, Belgium
Hadrien de Montferrand Gallery, London, United Kingdom
Sculptures dans la ville, Namur, Belgium
2020
Fabien Mérelle with Antoine Roegiers. A l’ombre des nuages - Nos abris dérisoires, Wilde Gallery, Geneva, Switzerland
SUPERNATURAL. Skulpturale visionen des Körperlichen, Kunsthalle Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany
Un Été au Havre 2020, Palais des Régates, Le Havre, France
Real Utopias, Manifesta 13 - The European Nomadic Biennial’, Parallèles du Sud, Marseille, France
Restons Unis : Sous le soleil exactement, Perrotin and Praz-Delavallade Galleries, Paris, France
Le goût de l’art, l’art du goût, Château du Rivau, Léméré, France
Ceci n’est pas un corps, La Boverie, Liège, Belgium
 
2019
Signes Personnages, Saint-Étienne-de-Chigny ; La Membrolle-sur-Choisille ; Fondettes ; Luynes ; Chambray-lès-Tours ; Saint-Pierre-des-Corps, France
Aux sources des années 80, Musée de l’Abbaye Sainte-Croix, Sables-d’Olonne, France
Hommage à Léonard et à la Renaissance, Château du Rivau, Lémeré, France
 
2018
Un Été au Havre, Le Havre, France
Formes d’Histoires, Les Tanneries, Amilly, France
Le Beau, la Belle et la Bête, Château du Rivau, Lémeré, France
The Sensation of the Sea. In honour of Bas Jan Ader, The Mesdag Collection, The Hague, The Netherlands
 
2017
The Raft. Art is (not) Lonely, Mu.ZEE, Oostende, Belgium
The Artist/Knight, Kasteel van Gaasbeek, Lennik, Belgium
 
2015
Thirty Shades of White, Praz-Delavallade, Paris, France
Free Admission, Praz-Delavallade, Paris, France
Portraits from the École des Beaux-Arts Paris, The Drawing Center, New York, USA
Collective IV, Art Bärtschi & Cie, Carouge/Acacias, Switzerland
Sarah Jérôme - Sous la chair des roches, Da-End Gallery, Paris, France
Les Chimères et Merveilles, Château du Rivau, Lémeré, France
Les moustaches Radar - Résonances daliniennes dans l’art contemporain, Le Radar, Bayeux, France
 
2014
Five Centuries of Melancholia, The University of Queensland, UQ Art Museum, Brisbane, Australia
 
2013
Donation Florence et Daniel Guerlain, MNAM - Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, France
Les visiteurs d’un soir, de l’atelier d’artiste à Drouot, Drouot, Paris, France
Collective II, Guy Bärtschi Gallery, Geneva, Switzerland
 
2012
Guy Bärtschi Gallery, Geneva, Switzerland
 
2011
Fabien Mérelle, François Nanjo, Sun Xun, Hadrien de Montferrand, Beijing, China
 
2010
Dessins contemporains / Collection Florence et Daniel Guerlain, Musée de Beaux-Arts et d’Archéologie,
Besançon, France
 
2009
When I Grow Up, Jean Roch Dard Gallery, Paris, France
Artistes de la Casa de Velàsquez 2007-2009, Casa de Velàsquez, Madrid, Spain
 
2008
Griesmar & Tamer Gallery, Paris, France
 
2006
Issue Gallery, Paris, France
La Fabrique du Dessin, École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Paris, France
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Dégel, 2018 - © Fabien Mérelle
© Fabien Mérelle
© Fabien Mérelle
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