Florian Mermin – Violette Cristal, 2024

Florian Mermin’s work is informed by influences from film, literature and philosophy, from Jean Cocteau to Edgar Allan Poe or Jean-Jacques Rousseau. It seeks to establish a dialectic between objects and humans, reality and the imagination, the animate and the inanimate, to blur the boundary between inner and outer. His immersive installations engage all of the five senses to explore the artistic and poetic possibilities of living things. His sculptures and ceramics involve natural or artificial plants, fresh or dried flowers, and borrow from the aesthetics of the hybrid, thanks to encounters with fantastic worlds and his quest for “the uncanny”.

Inspired by the history of the 17th-century apothecary at the Hôpital de la Charité, with its earthenware pots containing oils and ointments, Florian Mermin has developed a work based on the healing properties of flowers. Made from crystallised violet petals and precious stones, sculpture Violette Cristal evokes the cycles of nature and recalls the vanities with their reminder of the fleeting, ephemeral nature of existence. As the room is filled with the scent of violets, the work, with its iridescent reflections, appeals to the visitor’s sense of sight, taste and smell, encouraging sensitive reflection on the subject of health care.