Claudia Comte
Claudia Comte (b. 1983, Grancy) is a Swiss artist based in Basel, Switzerland. Working across site-specific installation, painting and sculpture, her practice is guided by a longstanding interest in teasing out the history and memory of biomorphic forms through traditional hand processes, industrial and machine technologies. At the heart of Comte’s installations are monumental wall paintings and serial sculptures inspired by organic patterns and morphology such as waves, sonar, cacti and rock strata, that are playfully recomposed within fluid and immersive environments. Drawing on the powers of communication, knowledge and symbiosis between animal and plant life, Comte’s dynamic and shape-shifting objects pay testament to the intelligence and transformative capacities of the ecological world.
Her work has been widely presented in solo and group exhibitions, including The Origin of the Shockwave Ripple Effect (yellow and turquoise), EMST, Athens (2024), The Bright Side of the Desert Moon, Noor Riyadh (2023), Solo Summer Group Show III, Solo Houses, Matarraña (2023), Cacti and Sunsets, Globus Public Art Project in collaboration with Fondation Beyeler, Basel (2023), Marine Wildfire & Underwater Forests, Gladstone Gallery, Seoul (2023), The Liberation of Form. Barbara Hepworth - A Master of Abstraction in the Mirror of Modernism, Lehmbruck Museum, Duisburg (2023), Desert Flood, Lago/Algo, Mexico City (2023), From Where We Rise, Casa Wabi, Puerto Escondido, Mexico 2023, Through Dry Ocean Forests, Albarran Bourdais, Madrid (2022), An Impending Disaster (HAHAHA), König Galerie im KHK Wien(2022), Geometric Opulence, Museum Haus Konstruktiv, Zurich (2022), Desert X AlUla, Saudi Arabia (2022), Tree Line Curve, Rolex Learning Center, EPFL Lausanne (2021), The Dreamers, 58th October Salon, Belgrade Biennale (2021), After Nature, Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid (2021), Jungle and Corals, König Galerie, Berlin (2021), The Sea of Darkness, Kunstraum Dornbirn (2020), How to Grow and Still Stay the Same Shape, Castello di Rivoli (2019), I have Grown Taller from Standing with Trees, Copenhagen Contemporary (2019), Zigzags and Diagonals, MOCA Cleveland (2018), Swiss Performance Now, Kunsthalle Basel (2018), KölnSkulptur #9, SkulpturenPark Köln (2017), NOW I WON, Messeplatz, Art Basel (2017), 10 Rooms, 40 Walls, 1059 m2, Kunstmuseum Luzern (2017), The Language of Things, with the Public Art Fund, New York (2016) and Heavy III, Haus Konstruktiv, Zurich (2014).
Passionate about using art as a tool for connecting marine conservation, policy change and climate education, she has collaborated with several organisations on projects, including a residency and underwater commission developed with TB21-Academy in 2019 to raise awareness of coral health around the Alligator Head Foundation in Jamaica.