(b. 1986, France) Lives and work in Paris, France.
It is with remarkable technical skill that Jean-Marie Appriou 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.
With The One Who Leads the Way (North Star), Jean-Marie Appriou imagines a passage between the depths of the sea and outer space. This two-part aluminium wall relief depicts a boat and its reflection, joined along a horizon line. A figure surrounded by radiating grooves stands among the travelers like a lighthouse. Linked to the North Star, it becomes a guide through the unknown. Around it, starfish form a constellation connecting the seabed to the sky. The boat recalls the solar vessels of ancient Egypt, while the passengers seem to travel between an origin myth and the exploration of unknown worlds. In the lower section, the scene reappears in negative relief: the imprint and the raised form become two states of the same image. Light catches the protrusions and enters the cavities, transforming the work as the viewer moves. Bringing together the living, the mineral and the cosmos, the sculpture offers a meditation on our origins and on the signs that help us move beyond the horizon.