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March 2026
Christian Vonarburg
Strata presents new work by Swiss artist Christian Vonarburg, whose practice is grounded in abstract geometry and a sustained commitment to non-narrative form. Built through rigorously constructed systems, the works translate geological processes—layering, accumulation, and deep time—into visual structures that operate through clarity rather than representation.
At its core, Strata is concerned with how time becomes legible. Vonarburg does not depict geology in any figurative sense. Instead, he converts its underlying logic into formal systems composed of repeated geometric motifs, rhythmic structures, and controlled colour propagation. Layers, fractures, and accretions are not illustrated; they are translated into visual operations that unfold across the surface of the work.
What initially appears precise and ordered gradually opens into a perceptual shift. The repetition of motifs produces variation rather than uniformity, and colour moves through form as a dynamic force rather than a descriptive one. The result is an encounter with time operating at scales far beyond human experience—a subtle sense of vertigo arising from the recognition of duration, pressure, and accumulation. Perception slows, attention sharpens, and complexity becomes structured rather than overwhelming.
Most works in the exhibition are realized using risography, whose incremental layering echoes the sedimentary logic at the heart of the project. A small number incorporate xerography and pencil, extending the same structural concerns through different material means. Across media, precision and repetition function not as stylistic choices, but as method.
Installed together, the works in Strata form a shared visual field rather than a linear progression. They invite viewers to inhabit the space of the exhibition, to register how time accumulates rather than resolves, and to experience abstraction as a means of thinking through scale, duration, and coexistence. Strata offers a meditation on how complexity can be held—clearly, rigorously, and without reduction.
Clients are invited to visit the virtual exhibition to view works, make inquiries, and download the exhibition brochure.
About the Artist
Christian Vonarburg was born in Fribourg, Switzerland, in 1967 and lives and works in Etoy, near Lausanne. His practice is rooted in abstract geometry and a deep commitment to formal construction. Trained in fine arts and architectural drafting, Vonarburg approaches image-making as a system—one in which method frames perception and form generates meaning directly.
Central to his work is the development of rigorously defined, non-overlapping geometric motifs. These motifs function as dynamic interfaces, mediating relationships between structure and colour, repetition and variation. For Vonarburg, form does not illustrate content; it is content. Meaning emerges through clarity, precision, and the direct experience of the image rather than through narrative or symbolism.
In recent bodies of work, including Strata, Vonarburg has turned to the geological imaginary as a formal problem rather than a representational one. Processes such as layering, accumulation, and deep time are translated into visual systems that operate across spatial and temporal scales. His work functions as a speculative archaeology, rendering vast, imperceptible processes visible through disciplined abstraction.
Alongside his studio practice, Vonarburg serves as Course Development Manager at EPFL’s Center for Digital Education. His involvement in education has profoundly influenced his artistic approach, nurturing an ongoing reflection on knowledge, perception, and art as a vehicle for questioning how meaning is constructed and transmitted. His work has been exhibited in Switzerland, Europe, the United States, and Central America.
January-February 2026
Cliff Warner: States of Being
States of Being marks the first exhibition in the United States of British artist Cliff Warner (b. 1961, England). Trained in painting and figurative drawing, Warner has developed a practice that moves deliberately between figuration and abstraction. His paintings are grounded in the human figure, yet resist fixed narratives, instead holding emotional and psychological states in suspension. Figures appear, recede, and sometimes fragment, embedded within atmospheres that remain intentionally unresolved.
For this exhibition, Warner presents a recent body of work that reflects his sustained inquiry into presence, solitude, and interior experience. These paintings are not illustrations of specific moments or stories. Rather, they function as quiet propositions—images that register states such as reflection, tension, closeness, and withdrawal without naming them directly. Ambiguity is central to the work, allowing meaning to emerge slowly through attention rather than explanation.
Process plays a critical role in shaping these images. Warner works through layers of acrylics, oils, pastels, inks, and spray paint, building and interrupting surfaces over time. Portions of the image are obscured or partially erased, suggesting memory, revision, and the limits of perception. What remains visible carries weight precisely because it has emerged through concealment.
Colloquia Art has curated States of Being to foreground this quiet intensity. The exhibition invites viewers to slow down, to inhabit the paintings rather than interpret them, and to recognize their own states of attention and feeling as part of the encounter. In presenting Warner’s work to U.S. audiences for the first time, the gallery affirms its commitment to art that resists easy classification and rewards sustained, reflective looking.
Clients are invited to visit the virtual exhibition to view works, make inquiries, and download the exhibition brochure.
About the Artist
Cliff Warner was born in England in 1961 and studied Fine Art at Liverpool Polytechnic, where he developed a strong foundation in painting and figurative drawing. Over several decades, his practice has remained committed to the human figure while gradually loosening its boundaries, allowing abstraction to enter not as departure but as extension.
Warner’s paintings are guided by intuition, revision, and restraint. He does not begin with a fixed image in mind. Instead, forms emerge through process, shaped by repeated engagement with the surface. Marks are added, softened, disrupted, or buried. The figure is never simply depicted; it is arrived at. This approach gives the work its distinctive psychological depth. The figures feel less like subjects being observed and more like presences being registered.
Solitude plays a recurring role in Warner’s work, but it is not presented as isolation. Figures exist in relation—to one another, to the space they occupy, and to the viewer. Even when alone, they seem held within a larger emotional field. Warner is attentive to small shifts that define inner life: the turn of a head, the weight of a posture, the pause between actions. These moments are understated, yet they carry resonance.
For Warner, painting is a way of thinking through feeling rather than illustrating it. The work does not offer conclusions. It offers conditions. In States of Being, his first U.S. exhibition, Warner presents paintings that reward sustained attention and invite viewers into a slower, more reflective mode of looking—one in which meaning emerges gradually and remains open.
November 2025
Harouna Ouédraogo: Spaces In Between
Colloquia art is thrilled to launch its 2025-2026 season with Spaces In Between, the first solo U.S. exhibition of Harouna Ouédraogo, a singular voice in contemporary African abstraction. This exhibition marks both the artist’s American solo debut and Colloquia art’s inaugural show of the year—an expressive pairing that embodies the gallery’s commitment to bold, boundary-crossing work.
For this exhibition, Ouédraogo brings a body of new work created specifically for Colloquia art. These paintings continue his exploration of urban density, personal myth, and collective memory—yet with a renewed intensity and clarity. The works are bold, physical, and emotionally precise, inviting viewers into a raw and intimate encounter.
The installation makes this restlessness visible. Rather than hung flat against the wall, the canvases are suspended slightly forward, hovering in space. They appear provisional and radiant, as if caught mid-process—paintings that are free and captured at once, between movement and stillness, process and permanence.
Colloquia art has curated Spaces In Between to highlight precisely this tension. Our perspective is that the most vital art is not fixed in meaning but alive in its capacity to remain open. This exhibition introduces an important contemporary voice to U.S. audiences and reflects our commitment to presenting work that resists easy categories, rewards slow looking, and sustains layered ways of seeing.
Guests and prospective clients are invited to visit the virtual exhibition to view works, make inquiries, and download the exhibition brochure.
About the Artist
Born in 1981 in Ouahigouya, Burkina Faso, Harouna Ouédraogo is known for his emotionally charged, semi-figurative paintings that fuse raw gestural abstraction with deep psychological resonance. A graduate of INAFAC (Institut National de Formation Artistique et Culturelle) in Ouagadougou, Ouédraogo has exhibited internationally, but this show marks his most focused U.S. presentation to date.
Ouédraogo describes his practice as “noisy figuration”—paintings alive with interruption, rhythm, and energy. Working primarily in acrylic and mixed media on canvas and paper, his visual language is immediate and improvisational: layering vibrant mark-making, erratic linework, and recurring symbolic figures that speak to identity, memory, and personal myth. His paintings are neither fully abstract nor comfortably figurative, dwelling in a charged in-between space that challenges interpretation and insists on feeling first.