Mérelle began his ongoing series of ink and watercolour drawings portraying the landscape of Pointe de Gatseau on Oléron Island back in 2016. It wasn’t until a few years later however that he realised he was drawn to the landscape because it had been disappearing with drawings dating back to 2016 no longer representing the island’s now evidently eroding natural environment.

The artist’s deliberately sparse landscapes are precisely drawn and meticulously detailed, informed by traditional Chinese painting—a graduate from the Beaux-Arts academy in Paris, Mérelle later attended the Beaux-Arts academy in Xi’an. Set against a white backdrop, they aim to convey a sense of spiritual and physical freedom.

Standing, crouching, or lying among the trees, rocks, and bunkers is Mérelle’s avatar, a pyjama-wearing man whose scale varies from life-size to thumb-sized who bears witness to the island's disappearing landscape and represents a desire to "be one with nature without disturbing it." Occasionally interacting with man-made structures along the shores, the dream-like scenes capture the solo performances the artist carried out on Oléron Island over the years: climbing a tree for a better view (Lookout Tree, 2024); embracing a tree trunk in an act of solidarity (Until the End, 2024); dancing, following the movement of branches half-drowned in water (Dance, 2024); lying on the remains of a Second World War bunker (Bunker, 2024), or standing straight in a hut (Framed, 2024).

Complementing Mérelle’s drawings on paper are a dozen ink-and-alcohol drawings drawn onto both tuffeau stones (a type of limestone found in the Loire Valley) and ceramics. Strewn across the gallery floor or resting against the walls, their fragmentary quality represents the artist's interest in exploring habitats through an archaeologist’s lens and in creating art in situ, while the juxtaposition between their rubble-like sensibility and detailed figurations reflects on the transitory nature of civilisation. Just like the artist’s works on paper, the minute scale of these drawings, some of which are just a few centimetres wide, prompts viewers to closely examine his figures.

Peering deeply into Mérelle’s drawings, a sense of initial familiarity, after closer inspection, takes on an eerie dimension that manages to tap into one’s innermost thoughts, dreams, and fears. The result? An overwhelming impression that this is an exhibition that not only visually creates connections between islands and lands, but also between the artist and the viewer’s subconscious on a much deeper level.