JEAN-MARIE APPRIOU: EXONAUT HORIZON

Perrotin is thrilled to present Exonaut Horizon, the second solo exhibition by French artist Jean-Marie Appriou at the gallery, and his first in its Paris location.

October 12 – November 16, 2024

Russian cosmonauts, American astronauts, European spationauts, Chinese taikonauts... Every culture has its name for those who visit the sky. For Jean-Marie Appriou, they are Exonauts. Fascinating beings with a chrysalis body, or cosmic mummies. Their heads are crystal skulls, with faces blossoming in the center, multiplied as if by mitosis—a cellular division that recalls the first flowering of life.

In this Exonaut Horizon, higher than the seventh heaven, Jean-Marie Appriou places the cradle of the cosmos, the crucible of past and future mysteries. There, time and forms merge, and mythical creatures populate coming civilizations. Fabulous beings and igneous matter, sculpted by the artist, are in a state of suspension, sowing worlds yet to be born, or allowing themselves to be shaped by the breath of the universe, between fecund inspiration and entropic exhalation...

The forms seek each other, waver, are recomposed. Nothing is eternal. Only movement is perpetual. From the edges of multiverses come particles of elementary matter that play with new combinations. The beginnings and ends of worlds are neither creation nor destruction. They form the rhythm of the breath, the ebb and flow of All. Space reveals itself to be the Ocean up above. And its fascinating bestiary is that of the shifting tides of the cosmos.

What is dreamed when we raise our heads is the supreme journey, the one that will liberate us from our smallness, from the poverty of our imagination, from the conspiracy of our reality. Thanks to this exploration, we will become immense. Not more powerful, but more profound.