About the Exhibition:
cam.contemporarie presents, ETERNALRETURN, the first solo exhibition in Chicago of work by London based artist, Sofia Clausse. In a series of black and white pressed prints in dialogue with small ceramic sculptures, wall diagrams, and installation, Clausse explores the subversion of language, spiritual cycles, and the elusive nature of endings and beginnings.
The concept of ETERNALRETURN is a continuous loop — an hourglass, a zen garden of lines layered with meaning, or an experimental process and practice of terminology. “I'm always thinking about transformations from one thing to the next, and to the next, and to the next, and then back to the beginning,” Clausse says. “There's always this thing of things being back at the beginning; there's no beginning and no end, essentially.”
Clausse explores the ambiguity of time, the fleeting nature of it, but also the determined and definite aspect of it, through a series of text and topographical pieces. The works are worked methodically until they reach a state of illegibility, reminiscent of the conceptual rigour of artist Glenn Ligon. Intentionally placed black lines and blacked out letters, chopped and woven pages, and text as a metaphor for possibilities: an exploration of words broken down to their basic form, becoming a representation of patterns, codes, or mantras. For Clausse, her work exists somewhere between a mantra and a meditation, and a controlled experiment exploring the loss of control and the elasticity of meaning.
