Serpent, 2017
Fabien Mérelle, born in 1981, Tours, France. He lives and works in Tours, France.
In his ink and watercolor drawings and sculptures, Fabien Mérelle deploys a hyperrealistic universe of his own, depicting himself as a seemingly ordinary man in a world populated by his desires, joys and fears. Always dressed in a white tank top and stripped pyjama pants as a uniform of sorts, Fabien Mérelle navigates between the real and the oneiric, the intimate and the universal; he rides a giant snake, he dances with a tree, arrows rain on him as he takes cover under a chair. The detail and realism of his drawings coexist with the characters and landscapes that surround him, surreal, intimate, ironic and oftentimes cruel manifestations of his innermost thoughts.
Although suspended in space at the center of a white page, time is not still in these dreams or nightmares that have come to include Fabien Mérelle’s wife and children, inscribing personal and mundane events into his mythological world.
Fabien Mérelle has exhibited at the Pontmain Contemporary Art Center in Pontmain, France; Chateau de Monbazillac in Monbazillac, France; and the Jules-Desbois Museum in Parçay-les-Pins, France.