Claudia Comte

The Deep, Impenetrable and Mysterious Jungle, 2024
7766 Fay Avenue

33’ x 32’ 5”
Maryanne and Irwin Pfister – Wall Sponsors

Claudia Comte’s mural, The Deep, Impenetrable and Mysterious Jungle, boldly revises compositional rules and expectations and takes content that would normally be in the background and brings it directly into the foreground. The Deep, Impenetrable and Mysterious Jungle, is part of Comte’s larger series of Jungle Paintings, originally painted in acrylic on canvas. Referencing the visual iconography of the Belgian comic artist André Franquin, and in particular his comics Spirou et Fantasio, Gaston Lagaffe, and Marsupilami, Comte strips excess content, such as characters and the built environment, from Franquin’s original comics, leaving only the linear depiction of a nature scene. Through this critical editing process, Comte implies that the natural environment is the leading character in this reimagined narrative she introduces. These abstracted fragments of Franquin’s world are created in a red to yellow gradient, referencing the horrific forest fires occurring throughout the world. The landscape is broken up by dizzying, black-and-white graphic patterning commonly found throughout Comte’s larger body of work. The lush, undisrupted, and almost naive, representation of nature found in the mural is reminiscent of Comte’s childhood, when she first discovered Franquin’s comics, recalling a time when global warming, forest fires, and desertification were not yet so present, in stark contrast to our current daily experience. 

Claudia Comte works between media, often combining sculptures or installation with wall paintings, to create immersive environments where multimedia works unfold with a visual rhythm that is both methodical and playful. Born in Grancy, Switzerland, in 1983, she studied visual arts at the École cantonale d’art de Lausanne in Switzerland and went on to receive her Master of Art degree in science of education in 2010 at Haute école pédagogique in Lausanne. Delving into her fascination in the memory of materials and her keen interest in how the hand relates to different technologies, she puts forth the possibility of a hidden sequence at play in her work, weaving together an integrated system of relationships both between and within individual works.  

Comte’s work has been shown widely throughout the world, including exhibitions and projects such as the Globus Public Art Project in collaboration with Fondation Beyeler, Basel, Switzerland, Lehmbruck Museum, Duisburg, Germany; LagoAlgo, Mexico City; Fundación Casa Wabi, Puerto Escondido, Mexico; Central Wharf Park, Boston, Massachusetts; Museum Haus Konstruktiv, Zurich; 58th October Salon—Belgrade Biennale; Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid; Kunstraum Dornbirn, Austria; Castello di Rivoli, Turin, Italy; Copenhagen Contemporary; MOCA Cleveland; KölnSkulpture #9; Kunstmuseum Luzern,; Desert X, Palm Springs; Public Art Fund, New York; and Haus Konstruktiv, Zurich. She has been the recipient of many awards, including the Kulturförderpreis by Alexander Clavel Stiftung in 2018, the Swiss Art Award in 2014, and the Kiefer Hablitzel Award in 2012. She lives and works in the countryside outside Basel, Switzerland. 

Photos by Philipp Scholz Rittermann