CLÉDIA FOURNIAU
HALLOOOOO

KÖNIG GALERIE
ALEXANDRINENSTRASSE 118–121, 10969 BERLIN

1 MAY – 31 MAY 2026

GALLERY WEEKEND OPENING
1 MAY 2026 | 6 – 9 PM

KÖNIG GALERIE is pleased to present the exhibition HALLOOOOO by Clédia Fourniau in the Ground Floor of St. Agnes. The exhibition brings together a new body of paintings alongside, for the first time, a series of works on paper. The following text, written by the artist herself, reflects on the central questions that shape this body of work and offers insight into her approach.

Studio Clédia Fourniau © Photo Clédia Fourniau

Text by Clédia Fourniau

"The exhibition Hallooooo explores the moment of initiation, that passage into action where gesture becomes performance. Initially inspired by the choreography of sport, the starting signal and the attack, my research gradually shifted toward the function of language and the ritual system of the social “hello.” This “Hallo,” used almost as an automatism, becomes here the trigger for a micro-scenario, an exaggerated attempt at sociability, a potential exchange that allows for a response without ever demanding it. This openness and interactivity give it a playful quality, while still setting something in motion, not physically but relationally. It is a call of the body, a reactivation, a challenge, a pretext.

Like a universal onomatopoeia, this ordinary word transforms into an elastic and cartoonish formula. The repetition of the “o” creates a loop, a kind of fixed grimace. As it stretches out, it gradually exhausts itself as a message and instead asserts itself as pure sonic and visual presence, a ritual mechanism. The mouth opens, contracts, and extends. The “oo” resemble bubbles, balls, mouths, or eyes. This elongation also introduces a critical distance. The viewer no longer knows whether they are facing a simple greeting, a pure onomatopoeia, or the dissection of a flexible social convention.

This in-between space concentrates the core concerns running through my work, an awareness of codes, repetition, re-enactment, reuse, learning, and the re-performance of tradition. In some of the paintings within the group, the reverse is no longer a hidden side but an active surface, made visible and put to use. By also working with the transparency of the canvases, I aim to question frontality and the regime of images by revealing the conditions of their making.

Between minimalist inquiry and the legacy of abstract expressionism, the works incorporate signs, pseudo-characters, and cryptic symbols. This collision of sources creates a deliberate dissonance, an attempt to short-circuit the authority of the gesture. The image becomes self-aware, a physical presence that reveals its own mechanisms, a “spectacle” of forms that openly admits its inner workings. In doing so, this activation engages an invisible counterpart, the viewer, history, or the market, and invites the beginning of a dialogue."

FEATURED ARTIST

CLÉDIA FOURNIAU
Clédia Fourniau (b. 1992 in Paris, France) lives and works in Paris. She received a BA from Ensaama Olivier de Serres School of Art & Design and a BA and MFA from the Beaux-Arts de Paris.

She explores the possibilities of painting and representation, questioning the conditions of creation, perception, and reception of an image. Through a constant engagement with formal experimentation, procedural approaches, and chance, Cledia Fourniau combines various materials and supports, such as dry pigment, oil paint, mica, acrylic, resin, and more recently, watercolor, on linen canvases or colored and treated textiles. This resin, with its...
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