Horizon, 2023 is a monumental aluminum project started by Jean-Marie Appriou in 2022. It is through a large-scale boat carrying two characters "austronauts" traveling through the stars and ages. Jean-Marie Appriou’s practice is a sublime union of mythology and craft. Verging on wizardry, he draws from his knowledge of ancient Egypt and literary history to generate new narratives, inhabited by characters that animate his flowing artistic production. From the vessels that carried ancient gods to the afterlife, to our contemporary spaceships that grant access to otherworldly dimensions, Appriou takes his viewer by the hand into his exquisitely poetic world, where classicism and pure imagination blossom into unique, sensory experiences. Co-presented with CLEARING, Jan Kaps, MASSIMODECARLO, and Perrotin.
Current Exhibition
Installation view, Jean-Marie Appriou, The Traveler, Neviglie, Piedmont, 2023
JEAN-MARIE APPRIOU
The Traveler
Langhe Monferrato Roero, Piedmont, Italy
April 22 – December 31, 2023
A sculptural boat called The Traveller (2023) by Jean-Marie Appriou will be on display in Neviglie, a village perched on the region's panoramic hills. The transition between elements—from the aquatic to the aerial, from the underground to the terrestrial—is one of the central themes of the artist's work. From archaic ages to futuristic civilizations, Appriou produces visions on the edge of psychedelia, mixing pop culture and mythologies from Greek and Egyptian antiquity to science fiction.
Learn more about the exhibition here.
Upcoming Publication
A monumental monograph tracing ten years of the French sculptor's practice over some 500 pages, with an interview and five essays.
It is with remarkable technical skill that Jean-Marie Appriou (born 1986 in Brest, France) takes control of sculptural materials—aluminum, bronze, glass, clay, wax—to envisage fantastical worlds inhabited by human, animal and vegetal figures. Through their skillfully constructed scale, his often imposing works nevertheless maintain an intimate relationship with the viewer, as if to better communicate their disturbing strangeness.
Deeply dreamlike, Appriou's material universe is imbued with telluric concerns approached from an original perspective: that of the legendary. Horses, snakes, locusts, sharks and seahorses compose a bestiary charged with powerful symbolism. They evolve in a dream realm, a marvelous natural world that becomes a theater of striking characters. Sowers, gatherers, beekeepers and Japanese Ama divers—all represent figures of passage and transformation. The transition between elements—from the aquatic to the aerial, from the underground to the terrestrial—is one of the central themes of the artist's work.
Learn more about the publication here.
