Since the 1980s, Claude Como has explored a wide range of media, including oil painting, ceramics, resin, charcoal, and wool, to delve into his own history and experiment with his relationship to the realities of the world, where living beings occupy a central place. By constantly contrasting volume and flatness, Claude Como constructs his work around the concept of life; today, his free-form, tufted shapes radically break free from the constraints of the frame.

In 2019, Claude Como began a series of tapestries created using a tufting gun, a technique traditionally used by artisans for rug making. These tapestries, entitled Supernature, depict abundant plant life and lush microorganisms. Their suppleness allows them to break free from the frame, literally colonizing the walls and lending an organic character to the architecture that houses them. The artist's choice of tufting situates her within the history of tapestry. Claude Como readily engages with Western art history, which she enjoys exploring in order to rework major classifications and subjects considered traditional. The tufted works contribute to a reactivation and extension of tapestry history. Nothing is fixed; everything is redefinable. The cut-out forms interlock, creating sprawling, fluid, and rhizomatic installations.

With a mixture of wonder and gravity, she presents decontextualized bodies, scenes devoid of horizons, and suspended ecosystems. The artist constructs her work from notions such as uprooting, movement, absence, impermanence, death, and possible rebirths.

Julie Crenn, PhD in Art History, art critic (AICA) and independent exhibition curator.
Text excerpts (2022)