Tom Grignard
Sculpture / Performance / Installation
Born in Nantes in 1995, lives in Mulhouse
After graduating from the ESAAA in Annecy in 2022 with a DNA Art degree (with honours), Tom began working in sculpture, performance and installation art. He crafts a univers populated by absurd mechanisms, devices and activatable sculptures.The eployed materials are mostly– wood, Plexiglas, metal, textiles, cardboard – assembled with artisan precision and childlike humour.
In Tom Grignard’s work, there is a stubborn joy in tipping things over into the realm of play.
Trained initially in cabinetmaking, he learned to build with rigour, to understand wood, movement and texture.
Then he began to break the rules: twisting customs and making objects whose purpose was no longer clear. He turned this gentle deviation into a driving force.
The idiot, a recurring concept in his research, is his stage double. A fragile, grotesque and harmless clown who performs with these objects. He activates the objects, which represents the transition to performance. This character becomes the conduit between the sculpture and the viewer: he breaks down the distance, allows for clumsiness, invites laughter, doubt and touch.
His installations often arise from a specific context: a studio, a collective, an exhibition to be curated, a space to be inhabited, or companies. He co-creates places and invents ways of working together. In Annecy, he helped founding Pied Jaloux, a self-managed artistic space where he organises exhibitions and residencies. In Brussels, he became involved in community life and in setting up alternative exhibition spaces. In 2025, he joined the MOTOCO studios in Mulhouse to continue his research, combining sculpture, manual labour and reflection on gesture.
Inventory of absurd tools.
Inspired by Dada, Erwin Wurm and Roman Signer, Tom cultivates an aesthetic of minor catastrophe: one that goes just far enough off the rails to provoke thought.
Through his projects, he questions function, productivity and utility. He plays with the tension between doing and undoing, between the usual and the frivolous, between art and craftsmanship.
