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

In 2024, Shanghai Rockbund Art Museum is proudly launching a new long-term project, the Semi-Permanent Occupy Initiative, which invites the most creative minds of our time to offer alternative definitions of museum spaces traditionally seen as marginal. The museum commissioned a mural from Swiss artist Claudia Comte titled There Was No Up, There Was No Down, There Was No Side To Side (2024), occupying the wall of the whole staircase of the museum from the first to the fifth floor, and eventually stretching its body into the west hall on the first and second floor. Growing up in the forests of the Jura mountains in Switzerland, Claudia Comte has been exploring the complex expressions in rendering nature. Her paintings and sculptures are inspired by organic patterns such as waves, sonar, cacti, and strata, and often manifest as large-scale outdoor installations that respond to their surroundings. There Was No Up, There Was No Down, There Was No Side To Side is the largest staircase project Claudia Comte has made to date, in which she introduced the pattern "bloom" for the first time. The building that houses the Rockbund Art Museum was built in 1933, one of China’s first natural history museums. Inspired by this history, Comte transformed and abstracted, through digital means, a series of 18th-century scientific graphics of jellyfish into 10 groups of multi-sized "bloom" patterns that swim across the five floors of the museum.

Influenced by Op Art, Claudia Comte’s works are characterised by precise geometric compositions and repetitive patterns, creating striking visual effects that challenge the viewers’ perception. By incorporating optical and illusive manipulations, There Was No Up, There Was No Down, There Was No Side To Side skilfully combines traditional mural techniques with modern technology to form a full-angel mural sensation that drives audiences into the history and memory of marine life. Semi-Permanent Occupy Initiative offers an immersive experience for the audiences to lose their orientation in Comte’s world and reach a perceptual environment beyond the boundaries of space and time.