” Pierre Fourmeau’s painting unfolds within a paradoxical tension: appearing by disappearing. Here, painting often begins by un-painting. Surfaces are not erected as continuous accumulations but as factories of active absences. Layers are laid down only to be immediately washed, sanded, erased, allowing remnants to surface — edges, halos, ghosts of pigment — that stand in for structure.
This regime of appearance/disappearance is not decorative: it stages a material dramaturgy, almost theatrical. Water plays a dialectical role, not as a destructive solvent but as an agent of revelation. Washed areas read like scores of events: turbulences, erosions, shifts of light. The painting is constructed by resisting its own dissolution.
Unlike the heroic legacy of Abstract Expressionism, Fourmeau does not sacralize his gesture. Here, the hand erases as much as it asserts. This anti-heroism inscribes fragility at the core of the pictorial act: the artist does not impose but negotiates with matter, at the risk of being lost within it. The canvas does not triumph; it wavers.
This fragility is not weakness but method. The works appear as interrupted construction sites, never fully closed, where incompletion becomes an ethic: to endure doubt, to refuse the polished closure, to turn instability into a condition of plastic truth.
From this arises the sensation of a discreet apocalypse: not a spectacular collapse, but the obstinate remnants of a fraying past. Each surface is haunted by survivals — in the Warburgian sense — erased traces that persist like ghosts, memories stubbornly returning. These paintings are not only to be contemplated; they are to be traversed, as sites of survival where time ceaselessly begins again.
Étienne Morel, critique et commissaire indépendant
Pierre Fourmeau (né en 1990) vit et travaille en Normandie. Formé à l’École du Louvre et à l’EHESS, il a présenté son travail pictural dans de nombreuses résidences (Abbaye de la Prée, Culterim Berlin, ŠUM Slovaquie, Centrale 7, …) et expositions en France et en Europe.
Il mène parallèlement une pratique musicale depuis plus de dix ans, à travers les groupes Avec des Gens Armés et On lâche les chiens, ainsi que dans le cadre du spectacle vivant (théâtre, danse), où il compose des musiques et environnements sonores à la frontière entre pop, expérimental et post-punk.
Il est également co-fondateur du tiers-lieu Les Petits Châtelets à Alençon, qu’il co-dirige depuis 2019. Cet espace de résidence et de création nourrit son engagement pour des projets collectifs et confirme une pratique à la fois plastique, musicale et communautaire, toujours ouverte à la rencontre et au partage.
Pierre Fourmeau
Born in 1990, France
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Portfolio – Pierre Fourmeau ENGLISH
Formation ZZZZZZZZZ
2014 – 2016 · EHESS (Paris) – Master degree in Arts & Language
2009 – 2014 · École du Louvre (Paris) – Art history and museology
2007 – 2009 · Literary preparatory class (Lille)
2001 – 2009 · Music Conservatory of Lille – piano & music theory
Professional experiences
Artistic Director & Curator – Chapêlmêle – cultural venue and residency space (since 2020)
Programming and coordination of exhibitions, concerts and artistic residencies.
Workshop Leader (2012 – present)
Artistic and educational projects with children and adults: building musical instruments, artistic awakening, introduction to art history, participatory parades and stage workshops, …
Composer & Performer (since 2008)
Musician in several bands and solo projects (Avec des Gens Armés, On lâche les chiens, Tomi Marx, …), collaborations for theater and dance performances.
Residencies (selection, Visual arts)
2025 · Culterim (Berlin, DE)
2025 · Abbaye de la Prée (Issoudun, FR)
2024 · Maison La Famille (Meaux, FR)
2024 · Les Oiseaux de la Tempête (Fougères, FR)
2023 · Espace en Cours (Douarnenez, FR)
2023 · ŠUM kultúrno-komunitné centrum (Trebišov, SK)
2022 · Centrale 7 (Segré-en-Anjou Bleu, FR)
2021 · Galerie Prisma (Cherbourg, FR)
Solo exhibitions
2023 · ŠUM, kultúrno-komunitné centrum (Trebišov, SK) – curated by Katarína Gubková
2021 · Halle aux Blés (Alençon, FR) – Demain est trop court
2018 · La Trockette (Paris, FR)
2011 · Espace culturel La Faille (Paris, FR)
2009 · Médiathèque (Lille, FR)
Group exhibitions
2025 · Cank Galerie (Berlin, DE) – Curated by Marthe Howitz
2023 · Estiv’art (Alençon, FR) – Whispers of Territory (city-wide summer exhibition)
2022 · Centrale 7 (Segré-en-Anjou Bleu, FR) – Traces Left Behind
2021 · Galerie Prisma (Cherbourg, FR) –When Painting Dreams of Itself (part of the “Mois de la Peinture”)
2019 · Le Confort Moderne (Poitiers, FR) – Residual Figures (group show on abstraction and gesture, linked to the festival Traverses)
2014 · La Linerie (Longueville-sur-Scie, FR) – Bodies Becoming Light
2013 · Maison des Arts (Paris, FR) – Jeunes Créateurs en Mouvement (as part of Nuit Blanche Off)
2012 · Trophée Alain Godon (Le Touquet, FR) – Prize finalist exhibition
Music – Concerts
Avec des gens armés (since 2023)
Experimental pop duo. Concerts in France, Belgium and Switzerland, including: La Luciole (SMAC, Alençon) · Brasserie ILLegaaL (Brussels) · Zéro Degré Est (Tours) · Festival Talbot Machine (Orne).
On lâche les chiens (2011–2021)
Solo project. Over 400 concerts across Europe, including: Festival La Plage des 6 Pompes (CH) · La Mécanique Ondulatoire (Paris) · Werkhof 102 (Bern) · Espace B (Paris) · Instants Chavirés (Montreuil).
Music – Compositions for performing arts (selection)
Compagnie Shift Shape (USA) – Metronians (2022)
Collectif Toujours – 200 % d’hommes d’action (2020)
Ensemble Éphémère – Résonances (2019)
Compagnie Quo Vadis (Finland) – Feeri (2018–2019)
Collectif Jokle – L’empreinte (2018–2019), Au revoir mon Amour (2017–2018)
Boxon Sentimental – Les Enfants d’Octobre (2017), Quand je parle de sexe et de Christ (2018)
Compagnie Hieronymus – Catwalk (2016)