ART CITIES:Madrid-Claudia Comte

Claudia Comte has long since developed from a shooting star of the Swiss art scene into an internationally sought-after artist. Claudia Comte complements the transgression and combination of different techniques and disciplines by juxtaposing materials such as wood and marble, which she works in the traditional manner of sculpture, with industrially produced elements.

By Efi Michalrou
Photo: Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza Archive

Claudia Comte’s solo exhibition “After Nature” brings together a series of sculptures carved with a chainsaw that have been specially commissioned for this event. The artist found the wood from endemic species during her residency at the interdisciplinary and collaborative programme offered by TBA21-Academy and Alligator Head Foundation at their space in Port Antonio (Jamaica). Through her contact with TBA21-Academy —passionate about researching the Oceans— Comte understood corals as complex beings that play a key role in the production of the Earth’s oxygen. Their extinction is having a deep impact on planetary life. This exhibition hinges on the idea of the possibility of understanding and regenerating corals and is divided into two spaces: day and night, each environment refers to a moment in the investigative process as well as a coming to terms with the Ocean’s life. The day space presents corals made of wood, while the second one evokes the darkness of the depths of the seabed, with a mural painting that, through graphics, shapes, technology and materials, it becomes an immersive installation that encourages reflection and approach to corals. Comte proposes the performance “The Day that Wood and Matter Wanted to Become Salt Water”, by Claudia Comte, with movement by artist and dancer Cecilia Bengolea, and music by Egon Elliut,  that empathetically activates her work on the understanding of the life cycles of corals, and their preservation. Joined by artist and dancer Cecilia Bengolea, and accompanied by an original score by Egon Elliut, the exhibition and its space are brought to life in a way only performances in real life can realize. The practice of imitation is an ancient one. If you move like a wave you may become one, if you pose like a coral, you may become one, if you act like a fish you may become one… Mimesis is the language of becoming and the space for alterity. When else could you understand best what it is to be or not to be the Ocean then the very moment you act like it? Claudia Comte’s performance is both mimicking her own sculptural practice and the depictions of marine animals inhabiting the exhibition. The movements created by Cecilia Bengolea, dancer and artist, absorb the forms of life of the waters to render them even more present and to influence our bodies so that we may as well follow her in this exercise.

Claudia Comte is a Swiss artist based in Basel. Her work centres on the memory of materials and a careful observation of how the hand relates to different technologies. Comte, who is best known for her site-specific installations, studied at the Ecole Cantonale d’Art de Lausanne, ECAL, and obtained a Masters of Art in Science of Education at Haute Ecole Pédagogique, Visual Arts, Lausanne, Switzerland. Her practice is guided by a distinct system of her own creation, wherein each artwork specifically relates to another. Comte’s minimalist approach to art making is equal parts methodical and dynamic. Ranging from sculpture to painting, to multimedia installation, her works are infused with a distinct sense of playfulness. Carving by hand, or scanning, or 3D printing are all functions of a knowledge that sculpture possesses and shares every time a new piece comes to life. What we need to learn is how to see —in every pattern, and, object— an environment, oxygen, the way the conditions of our planet modify the materials. Cecilia Bengolea works on a range of media including performance, video, and sculpture. Using dance as a tool and a medium for radical empathy and emotional exchange, Bengolea develops a broad artistry where she sees movement, dance, and performance as animated sculpture, where she herself is both object and subject in her own work. Egon Elliut is the project of Austrian-born multi-genre recording artist and composer Egon Thuile. His music is an experiment fueled by his curiosity in collective human behavior and gaming culture. Egon has collaborated with Claudia Comte on multiple productions since 2013. Raised in both Kenya and Guatemala, he now resides in Berlin.

Photo: Claudia Comte, After Nature, exhibition view, Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza-Madrid, Courtesy the artist and Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza

Info: Curator: Chus Martínez, Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Paseo del Prado 8, Madrid, Spain, Duration: 11/5-22/8/2021, Days & Hours: Mon 12:00-16:00, Tue-Fri & Sun 10:00-19:00, Sat 10:00-21:00,  www.museothyssen.org