Jean-Marie Appriou

"An assiduous practitioner of the collision of materials, textures and signs, Jean-Marie Appriou draws a Rabelaisian landscape where objects are placed under the benevolent patronage of oxymoron. The grey eminence of his work, oxymoron plunges us into confusion and surprise, with hallucinatory visions close to the vocabulary of the absurd, conjuring up in turn a sausage monk, a cactus Saint-Sébastien, or a mermaid undergoing UV treatment. At the crossroads of the licentious tale and the caricature, Jean-Marie Appriou is the priest of white weddings organised between forms, in a parish where preaching is addressed to the intrigues of the imaginary.
The analogies drawn by the artist are the result of the wanderings and strolls of the mind, combined with the findings and decisions of matter. For Jean-Marie Appriou, the encounters between these elements, these environmental fragments, often respond to a fertile recipe of analogy, comparison and impromptu rapprochements. It would seem that, as Plato said, behind the visible and particular forms of matter lie ghostly shapes that serve as invisible models. From now on, the artist will be their witness and ambassador, revealing siblings and affiliations, familiarities and alliances, through visions nourished by the asymmetry of resemblance. These unexpected amalgams give rise to highly radioactive objects, whose emanations pervert myths and revisit the picturesque, baked at 1,300 degrees.
The result is a pantheon of works, totemic embodiments of a contemporary folklore disguised and parodied. Each object constitutes a survey of the sum of our representations, a drilling of our perversions, a carrot extracted from our consciences. Poking fun at the possible corruption of matter and the probable alteration of signs, Jean-Marie Appriou revels in the debauchery of optics and leads us into a poetic anomaly.

Rebecca Lamarche-Vadel