→Axel Morel

Biography

Axel MOREL, a french artist explores the boundaries between sculpture and volume embroidery, developing a singular artistic approach that fuses tradition and innovation. A graduate of the Métiers d'Art, he began his career as a costume designer in Paris, while continuing to explore sculpture in all its forms. He explores various mediums such as glass or bronze, and transcends conventional techniques by integrating embroidery into three-dimensional structures, whether figurative or abstract. This innovative approach gives rise to pieces in which the thread, traditionally associated with the surface, extends and rises, creating organic and dynamic forms. Why do I use embroidery as a means of artistic expression? I've always been fascinated by needlework, whether it's lace, pearl or gold embroidery. The first piece I embroidered was a heart in glass beads on a square of silk satin. This experience immediately delighted me, and I really enjoyed bringing this object to life, trying to make the motif emerge, to compose with colors, to seek to tame volume, to struggle with the resistance of materials. I then threw myself frantically into the production of a series of embroidered hearts, each borrowing from a different period of art history. As a costume designer, I've used embroidery extensively, notably for corset ornamentation, but also when creating painted canvases for theater sets, seeking to imitate the movements of embroidered lines on very large formats. I had the great good fortune to be a student of Anne-Françoise Benhamou - playwright, Florence Delay - writer and academician, Véronique Simon - costume designer, and a close friend of costume designer Jacques Schmidt, the greatest in my eyes. Virginia Woolf, Louise Bourgeois, Louise Labbé and Christian Dior are among my greatest inspirations. Thanks to them, I've found an artistic path that combines extreme rigor, the desire to eliminate the unnecessary and the need for meaning. In this way, I pursue a fairly personal line of work, using different techniques demanded by the works themselves. Experimenting, seeking to create complex pieces - whether realistic or imaginary - seeking simplification and sometimes opening a space towards abstraction. It's work that's at once meditative, requiring withdrawal from the world, and nourished by the impact of the outside world. The physical intensity - sometimes the pain - produced by the engagement of the body, implies a number of pauses that I like to be contemplative, like phases of aggregation, which stretch out the time of creation. The thread sums up my approach to this medium. Connecting things, marking distances from one point to another, and in this way building paths - symbolic, utilitarian, amorous - perhaps recreating a lost link ? In Bulgaria, Axel Morel works with different galleries in Europe, and his art works are collected in prestigious collection in Bulgaria, China, France, USA, Belgium… He participates in several group show as : ""MBMC my body my choice "" Pride month Sofia - 2025, ""Power pussy"" in SEW 8 - 2025, ""Horizonta"" Non Sofia gallery - 2026, In form Doza gallery - 2026, solo shows as : ""Vestiges"" Triangular tower gallery - 2024, ""Cosmos"" Atelier 28 gallery - 2025, 4Hands I mirror #1 Little Bird Place gallery 2026, and participates at the Sofia Art Fair since 2025 with Atelier 28 and Little Bird Place.