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Fabien Merelle is a French artist the besides great drawings, also translates them into contemporary sculptures.
While much of art deals with vulnerability and fear on a symbolic level, Fabien Merelle’s drawings and sculptures lay out the artist’s insecurities and nightmares for all to see. Using himself as his chief protagonist, Merelle depicts himself either naked or in his pajamas (reminding us that all of the strange things he shows us are occurring in his dreams). Still, when perusing his body of work, one picks up on allusions to the anxieties that haunt many of us at night.
The animated sculpture depicts a man withstanding the weight of an elephant – a translation of an illustration by the same artist into three-dimensional volume lightheartedly
referencing the maxim ‘to have the weight on one’s shoulders’.
Meet more contemporary sculptures HERE!
One of the most significant pieces in his oeuvre, Pentateuque, shows a struggling Merelle balancing an elephant on his back. Created in three iterations — a drawing, a small-scale sculpture, and an enormous public art installation in Hong Kong, 2013 — the piece suggests the pressures we feel to perform various roles.
Other pieces show Merelle as the protector of an infant or seeking shelter from gigantic, maternal-looking women, alluding to the idea of healing one’s inner child. While many of the works are much more surreal, they echo with similar notes of tension experienced in a worrisome person’s sleep. We can say he is almost converting our dreams into reality.
