In Claudia Comte’s works forms become reformed with new meaning, and shapes lose all previous connotations. Incorporating wall murals, installation, sculpture, and film, Comte’s practice makes democratic use of signifiers to produce a performance of object and phenomenon. For example, Sharp Sharp (2014) is an installation that stands as an elaborate staging device designed to enhance and augment the impact of Yellowwood sculptures. Carved with a chainsaw, the shapes are a gesture scaled up, but in no means intuitive. Using modelling clay pressed between her thumb and fore finger as the initial expression, Comte employs this maquette as a schematic for the final shape. Working in forms that seem to pay homage to Modernist giants, such as Brancusi, the method and execution playfully undermine this comparison–as it is unclear whether it is the first absent minded gesture or the months of execution that take precedent. Typical of her practice, this work is characterised by irreverent and joyful referentiality.

She has been the subject of solo exhibitions at Gladstone Gallery in New York, David Dale in Glasgow, Haus Konstruktiv in Zurich, Centre Culturel Suisse in Paris, and the Swiss Institute of Rome. She has also been included in group exhibitions at Kunsthaus Glarus, Aargauer Kunsthaus in Aarau, Elevation 1049 in Gstaad, and at SALTS in Basel.

Courtesy of David Dale