Claudia Comte: There Was No Up, There Was No Down, There Was No Side To Side

The Rockbund Art Museum proudly announces the launch of the Semi-Permanent Occupy Initiative (SPOI), starting in Summer 2024. This innovative long-term project reimagines the museum's peripheral spaces by inviting artists to "take over" these areas, reconceptualizing the building’s transitory and marginal zones into captivating environments for encountering artworks. Unlike traditional shows, which are typically time-bound by tight exhibition calendars, this initiative also empowers artists with the autonomy to determine the duration of their installations—ranging from as short as an hour to as long as decades.

For the inaugural project of this new series, RAM has commissioned a large wall painting from Swiss artist Claudia Comte. Titled There Was No Up, There Was No Down, There Was No Side to Side (2024), this immersive work occupies the entire west staircase of the museum, spanning the first to the fifth floors, extending into the west lobby of the building.

Claudia Comte, who grew up in the forests of the Jura mountains in Switzerland, has long explored complex connections between art, ecology, and natural environments. Her paintings and sculptures draw inspiration from organic rhythms and forms found in nature, such as waves, sonar, cacti, and strata, often interpreting these phenomena as highly patterned, large-scale outdoor installations that are designed to co-mingle and interact with their surroundings. 

In There Was No Up, There Was No Down, There Was No Side to Side, Comte introduces her new pattern, “bloom,” for the first time. This design draws inspiration from the historical building that now houses RAM, originally one of China’s first natural history museums, and features an abstract interpretation of Ernst Haeckel's 19th-century scientific illustrations of jellyfish. Using digital techniques and incorporating optical and illusionary manipulations, Comte transformed these references into ten clusters of multi-sized blooms that appear to float, flow, and swim across the museum’s five floors, challenging viewers' perceptions of marine life.

Claudia Comte: There Was No Up, There Was No Down, There Was No Side To Side is curated by X Zhu-Nowell, Artistic Director, with Pandan, Curatorial Assistant. The major support of the project is provided by ROCKBUND, with additional support from Pro Helvetia Shanghai, the Swiss Arts Council.

About 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 exploring 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, 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.

Comte’s work has been exhibited at various institutions, including Noor Riyadh (2023); Solo Houses, Matarraña (2023); Globus Public Art Project in collaboration with Fondation Beyeler, Basel (2023); Lehmbruck Museum, Duisburg (2023); Lago/Algo, Mexico City (2023); Casa Wabi, Puerto Escondido, Mexico (2023); Museum Haus Konstruktiv, Zurich (2022); Desert X AlUla, Saudi Arabia (2022); Rolex Learning Center at EPFL, Lausanne (2021); the 58th October Salon at the Belgrade Biennale (2021); Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid (2021); Kunstraum Dornbirn (2020); Castello di Rivoli (2019); Copenhagen Contemporary (2019); MOCA Cleveland (2018); Kunsthalle Basel (2018); SkulpturenPark Köln (2017); Art Basel (2017); Kunstmuseum Luzern (2017); Public Art Fund, New York (2016); Haus Konstruktiv, Zurich (2014). Passionate about using art as a tool for connecting marine conservation, policy change, and climate education, Comte has collaborated with several organizations 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.