La cinquième essence, Jean-Marie Appriou

This summer, MO.CO. Montpellier Contemporain presents solo exhibitions by two major figures of the French contemporary art scene : Françoise Pétrovitch at MO.CO. and Jean-Marie Appriou at MO.CO. Panacée. In parallel, the 2025 graduate exhibition from MO.CO. Esba (curator Sophie Lapalu) will be held at the remarkable heritage site of the Faculty of Medicine in Montpellier.

Jean-Marie Appriou is an alchemist in its medieval description: he gives shape to the shapeless and explores materiality by questioning Man’s connection to cosmos. He etches human figures, plants and animals on paper, carves and models clay, melts aluminum and bronze to delight the world, whispers to his blown glass, merges volcano rocks together.

His mythical universe explores the microscopic and the infinitely large. His artworks are poetic fictions, full of hybrid creatures, “exonautes”, painting and literature characters as well as invasive plants. The gaze goes from the primordial soup to the stars. The exhibition is conceived like a journey crossing different worlds and combining the elements through their materiality.

La cinquième essence allows the artist to explore his medium of choice, sculpture – aluminum, bronze, glass, clay - and uses MO.CO. Panacée architecture, built around a patio, to distill the four elements employed in his work: water, earth, air and fire. Alchemy introduces a fifth element, or a fifth essence: ether. According to its antique and medieval definition, ether is the invisible element that fills the void. It is everything and nothing, it gives life to others. That’s how Jean-Marie Appriou approaches sculpture: “it is a matter of balance, of emptiness and fullness, of mass, like another part of life”.

Curators : Caroline Chabrand and Numa Hambursin
Exhibition Production : Julie Chateignon, Conservation Officer
Assisted by Lou-Ann Dubos, intern

With the participation of PERROTIN.