Stupendo
l'effetto scenico delle recenti opere di Claudia Comte da König a Berlino, un
forte impatto visivo che trasforma la percezione dei materiali e la qualità
delle forme, sembra di entrare in una foresta primordiale o in un antico mausoleo.
CS
KÖNIG
GALERIE is pleased to present 'When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth', Claudia Comte’s
second exhibition at the gallery. Comte has conceived an immersive environment
comprising spruce trees, new sculptures, and a multi-channel video installation
for the nave of the space.
'When
Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth' brings together multiple aspects of Comte’s work
with a particular focus on the history of materials and the play between
ancient and digital technologies. Returning to the use of wood, marble, and
bronze in craft and industrial production which have long played an important
role in her work, the exhibition can be seen to ‘look back to look forward’. In
uncovering prehistoric technologies, as well as systems and languages in
contemporary forms, the exhibition proposes that connections between these
ideas might provide help to navigate the Anthropocene.
In
the main space of KÖNIG GALERIE, a large grid-formation features twenty spruce
trees suspended from the ceiling – each tree revealing a carved reliquary in
which wood, marble, and bronze sculptures are placed. The placement of the
spruce echoes the load-bearing column supporting the nave. Comte’s
idiosyncratic family of bunnies, snakes, and cacti are joined by plastic
bottles, cans, and shells. While materials like marble signify antiquity and
stability, Comte’s casting of plastic detritus – a material which takes
approximately 450 years to decompose – probes the value systems and temporal
registers we ascribe to materials. The notion that plastic and other supposedly
‘disposable’ materials disappear from sight is challenged in the exhibition – a
reminder that plastics and polymers are now found in the most remote of places.
Illuminating
the trees are a suite of 4-D video animations produced in collaboration with
the Computer Science Department at the University of Freiburg, Germany.
Sculptural renders are repeatedly subjected to a range of algorithmic actions
causing them to atrophy over and over again. The algorithm – typically an agent
of ‘problem-solving’ touted by global technology firms – is deployed here as an
agent of visual subterfuge, reducing apparently solid, stable materials into
viscous, runny matter.
In
another video work, the remote landscapes of Kyrgyzstan or Papua, Indonesia and
are adjoined to the exponential industrialisation of natural resources in
Western cultures. While for a Western audience these places invoke romantic
ideals about untouched terrain that seem relatively unchanged, on her visit
Comte found the opposite to be true, observing that industry, technology, and
materials move across the world in molecular drifts.
A
soundtrack bringing together the various elements of the exhibition has been
developed in close collaboration with Egon Elliut. Overlaying recordings of
nature and chanting with melodic sounds relating to the building’s site as a
former church, the soundtrack reflects Comte’s mnemonic impressions of the
forest. Through the mixing process, the chanting takes on a futuristic quality,
while the synthetic beat effectively eschews aural recognition.
Throughout
the exhibition, juxtapositions of old and new, material and digital abound. In
bringing the natural fibres of wood into contact with the glossy materiality of
LCD monitors, Comte exposes the points where nature and culture, prototype and
modernity inextricably entwine across time.
Human
knowledge is constantly being expanded and challenged by fossiliferous finds,
making it possible to detect in today’s resource extraction the traces of
Triassic life. From the concentric rings of the spruce – which show different
speeds of growth according to ecological and climatic shifts – to the sand and
other minerals that are melted together to produce the glass of the monitors,
'When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth' proposes a different analogue of time – one
where past, present, and future are deeply entangled.
Born
in 1983 in Morges, Switzerland, Claudia Comte lives and works in Grancy,
Switzerland and Berlin, Germany. Previous solo and group exhibitions include
Zigzags and Diagonals, MOCA Cleveland (2018), Swiss Performance Now, Kunsthalle
Basel (2018), KölnSkulpture #9, Köln (2017), La Ligne Claire, Basement Roma
(2017), NOW I WON, Messeplatz, Art Basel (2017), 10 Rooms, 40 Walls, 1059 m2,
Kunstmuseum Luzern (2017), DesertX, Palm Springs (2017), Catch The Tail By The
Tiger, König Galerie, Berlin (2016), The Language of Things, Public Art Fund,
New York (2016),
