ASCENDING THE ASHES: TALE OF RENEWAL: CLAUDIA COMTE SOLO EXHIBITION

K&L Museum presents the first institutional solo exhibition in Korea of Swiss contemporary artist Claudia Comte, Ascending the Ashes: A Tale of Renewal. This exhibition features an immersive environmental installation including a series of new sculptures and a large soil wall painting, cohesively situated within the museum’s expansive multi-level galleries. Comte’s enduring fascination with the convergence of art and ecology resonates throughout the exhibition, demonstrating her multidisciplinary approach to artmaking and commitment to creating imaginative landscapes that address pressing global issues such as climate change and the preservation of ecosystems.  

 

Exploring the magnificence and complexity of volcanic phenomena, Ascending the Ashes: A Tale of Renewal takes inspiration from Werner Herzog's film, Into the Inferno (2016). In Herzog's cinematic exploration, the allure and formidable intensity of active volcanoes are examined alongside the insights of volcanologist Clive Oppenheimer. Through breathtaking cinematography, Herzog underscores the impact of volcanic activity on the cultures and communities residing in the shadows of these fiery giants. Similarly drawing attention to the cyclical nature of creation and destruction in the natural world, the artist’s presentation underscores the delicate balance between geological forces and ecological resilience. Reflecting on the ramifications of volcanic activity for global biodiversity and environmental sustainability, the exhibition examines the enduring impact of volcanoes in shaping not only landscapes but also cultural and environmental discourse.  

 

Central to Comte's installation is a vast AI generated lava stream, cascading through the many rooms of the museum. The artist highlights the physical dynamics of the flowing lava that traverses every corner of the exhibition space by utilising sophisticated 3D simulation software that digitally imprints the spectacle onto a carpet. In tandem with this immersive graphic saturated with vivid red and orange hues, a monumental wall painting created with soil envelops the exhibition space in undulating waves, evoking the rugged contours of a mountainscape or the gentle ripple of water. Its geometric quality is evident of Comte's ongoing visual vocabulary and scientific exploration of patterns found in nature.   

Nestled within this entropic tableau lies a series of meticulously rendered sculptures of tree trunks and creatures indigenous to volcanic regions, sculpted from black Marquinia marble. Their solemn presence echoes the resilience of life amidst the chaos of environmental upheaval. Comte depicts five fauna specimens, each 3D-scanned from taxidermised relics housed in Basel’s Natural History Museum: an iguana atop a charred tree stump; a hummingbird perched on a partially singed bough; a lifeless fish upon a stone; a pair of extinct golden toads on weathered driftwood, now poignant symbols of biodiversity's decline; and the colossal forms of woolly mammoth tusks emerging from the earth. The extinction of mammoths, particularly woolly mammals, remains a subject of scholarly discourse, emblematic of a species extinguished due to a complex interplay of factors including climate change, early human predation, habitat loss from migration and expansion, and exposure to disease.   

 

In The Earth Room (Jungle Painting and Five Marble Cans), Claudia Comte transforms the museum’s vitrine-like window space at it’s entrance by filling it almost entirely with soil, subtly nodding to Walter de Maria’s minimalist earth sculptures. Suspended above this earthen mass is a new work from her Jungle Paintings series, which, inspired by the visual language of Belgian comic artist André Franquin, removes all human and industrial elements to focus solely on the linear depiction of nature. This reduction emphasises the natural environment as the central subject, accentuated by a red-to-yellow gradient that evokes the global threat of forest fires. The installation is further enriched by five marble sculptures, carved to resemble oversized aluminium drinking cans, which rest atop the soil, blending the natural with the artificial through Comte's artistic subterfuge. These sculptures, symbolising consumer culture, juxtaposed against the raw soil, critique the impact of human consumption on the environment, reflecting on the intersection of art, nature, and the consequences of modernity. 

  

One additional Jungle Painting have been installed on the 3rd floor of the museum between the cafe and bookshop. The collective presence of different elements in the exhibition—lava, soil, creature, and forest— delineates a symbiotic relationship in the context of volcanic activity’s impact on terrestrial ecosystems. Following volcanic eruptions, the remnants of trees, including charred stumps or petrified wood encased in solidified lava flows, stand as enduring witnesses to the sheer force unleashed by nature. While lava may precipitate immediate destruction during such events, it concurrently assumes a crucial role in the transformation of landscapes, the enhancement of soil fertility, and the facilitation of the gradual emergence of distinctive ecosystems over time. 

  

Drawing parallels with Dante's descriptions of his descent through the physical and psychological infernal territories in his book, Inferno, Comte’s version of the “inferno” could also be interpreted as a contemplation of this vertiginous search for redemption or renewal, a quest for light. By echoing Dante's journey, Comte's exhibition emerges as an allegory for the human experience, prompting the question: what does it mean to confront the complexities and paradoxes of our existence in the era of the Anthropocene? Upon encountering Comte’s portrayal of the “inferno,” one may find themselves immersed in perpetual oscillation between the fiery realms of geological wonder and devastation.