CLAUDIA COMTE

For the inaugural project of this 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 new work occupies the entire west staircase wall of the museum from the first to the fifth floor, eventually extending into the west lobby on the first and second floors.

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 as highly patterned, large-scale outdoor installations that interact with their surroundings.

In There Was No Up, There Was No Down, There Was No Side to Side, Comte unveils a new motif called ‘blooms,’ inspired by 19th-century German naturalist Ernst Haeckel’s jellyfish illustrations. Utilising digital tools, Comte abstracts these organic forms, offering a profound exploration of perception and experience. Reflecting on the museum’s past as one of China’s earliest natural history museums, Comte’s wall painting vividly brings to life the mathematical truths inherent in nature, drawing viewers deep into marine life’s historical and morphological memory.

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.

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.