Jean-Marie Appriou - La cinquième essence

Catalogue of the exhibition Jean-Marie Appriou. La cinquième essence, presented at MO.CO. Montpellier Contemporain (21 June - 28 September 2025).

Jean-Marie Appriou is an alchemist in the medieval sense of the term: he gives form to the formless and explores materiality by questioning the relationship between Man and the cosmos. He engraves his human, animal and plant figures on paper, shapes clay to model his works, casts aluminium and bronze to amaze the world, whispers to the breath of glass, and fuses volcanic lava stones.

Imbued with legends, his universe extends from the infinitely small to the infinitely large. His works are poetic fictions, populated by hybrid creatures, “exonauts”, characters inspired by painting or literature, and invasive plants. The gaze is directed from the primordial soup to the stars.

In the works in the exhibition, conceived as a journey, he traverses worlds and mixes elements through materials.

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让-马里·阿普里乌展览目录。《第五元素》，蒙彼利埃当代艺术博物馆（MO.CO）展出（2025年6月21日至9月28日）。

让-马里·阿普里乌是一位中世纪意义上的炼金术士：他赋予无形之物以形态，通过探索物质性来思考人类与宇宙的关系。他将人类、动物或植物的形象刻在纸上，用粘土塑造作品，浇铸铝和青铜来震撼世界，轻吹玻璃，熔合火山熔岩。

他的世界充满传奇色彩，从微小到巨大，无所不包。他的作品是充满诗意的虚构世界，栖息着混合生物、“太空人”、源自绘画或文学的人物以及入侵性植物。视线从原始混沌延伸至星辰。
在以旅程为概念设计的展览作品中，他穿越世界，通过材料融合元素。