Fabien Mérelle: Arbre sentinelle

Nature has always found its way into art. Once an object of romantic contemplation, it now returns under a different gaze – as a deep need to reconnect, to rediscover our bond with the living world. The drawings of Fabien Mérelle (b. 1981, Fontenay-aux-Roses) respond to this call. Not through revolt, but through surrender. His work breathes nature – not as a subject, but as a source.

As always, Mérelle surprises with drawings of exceptional finesse, where reality and imagination intertwine with perfect fluidity. It all begins with the tree: "The tree is the beginning of everything, and from this tree I mimic nature."

At times, his universe leaves the page to take shape in sculpture – a tangible extension of his drawing, where body, nature, and moment come together once again.

In Arbre sentinelle, the artist’s third solo exhibition at the gallery, Mérelle turns his gaze to a vanishing place: the island of Oléron, a small islet off the Atlantic coast, where he spends summers with his family. Only the trees remain there, silent witnesses of a retreating landscape. The artist draws deep inspiration from it, as he does from the Loire landscapes that surround him daily, near Tours. The Loire, with its floods and ebbs, evokes for him a blank page to be filled. As he says (and repeats), “Water has the last word” – it always reclaims its rights, reminding us of both the fragility and permanence of the landscape.

The exhibition explores appearance and disappearance, and what that means for the human being in search of their place in a constantly shifting landscape. In several drawings, Mérelle “falls,” or pretends to. He enacts this fall, this in-between state. A body off balance, as if carried off by time, a reminder that he too fades – just like the scenery around him.

His sculptures extend this same quest: fragile presences where man seems to become one with the elements. With his wooden puppets, Mérelle removes their heads to place his own, as if becoming the model to be drawn himself. A way of inhabiting his work.

The sculpture Pyrrha (girl’s body, artist’s head) evokes a childhood memory, nourished by a Greek myth – that of Deucalion and Pyrrha, sole survivors of a flood. The oracle commands them to throw behind them “the bones of their mother.” They understand that their mother is Earth (Gaia), and her bones are stones. When thrown, these stones become new humans. In Pyrrha’s hand, the stone becomes mineral memory – but also, raised like a banner.

A new element in this exhibition: Fabien Mérelle experiments with ceramics as well as a technique of dipping his drawings in wax. Landscapes seem frozen there under an opaque veil, suspended in time. The wax preserves the vulnerability of the line, while adding an aura of mystery.

The tree and the water play a crucial role in this artist’s work, often present through their absence. “Water, even when invisible in the drawing, stages the void.” Thus, the viewer becomes a participant – no longer a mere observer, but an integral part of the scenery his work evokes.

This tree no longer exists.

Kathy de Nève, October 2025