Clédia FOURNIAU

Clédia Fourniau views her work as an archeology of colored layers, transparency, and light, where painting explores the relationship between the body and space, and the conditions of perception and reception of an image.

She works on a flat surface, manipulating the liquid material by lifting her canvases stretched on wooden panels. Tinted throughout, the layers obtained from dyes and acrylic inks mix randomly. She then sets them with a polyurethane resin (commonly used to varnish boat hulls). This gives the painting a shine, so that the surrounding space is reflected in it as in a mirror.

The electric palette plays on the ambiguity of the work, between a piece of goldsmithing and a radioactive block. The small-sized works can be placed like a book in a library: everyone can touch them and see themselves reflected in them. She thus questions the gesture and nature of the work, "between volume painting and flat sculpture."

The process itself is a work of art, and the formal result is not the only issue. Clédia Fourniau does not seek to fix or finish a painting, but rather an all-over composition entirely made of layers and endless reworkings. In a work that is always serial, almost assembly-line-like, the canvases are produced simultaneously and are referenced by series numbers, like specimens of an experiment.