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Claudia Comte explores the many facets and patterns of nature through a multitude of media and materials. It is as if her work examines how nature arises as an artificial phenomenon, made by human actions. She is interested in the memory of natural materials, and how they are shaped by different human technologies.

In her sculptural work, Comte often uses a chainsaw, cutting tree trunks into roughly curved volumes, zigzag shapes, or a rudimentary cactus, after which the wooden sculptures are sanded, polished and oiled. Besides sculptural work, Claudia Comte also makes paintings. These are often colour gradients or monotonous lines on shaped canvases. These works are reminiscent of geometric abstraction and the colourful and illusionistic op-art from the sixties. A play of natural patterns forms the basis of these works. Comte makes these in an almost Zen way of painting, if it were not for the fact that the result again feels almost cartoonesque.

Claudia Comte’s paintings and sculptures come together in exhibitions in large installations in which optical-illusionist murals often play an important role. Transformation is a central concept in many of Comte’s murals. With Curves and Zigzags, for example, she made a gigantic mural (on a specially constructed 30-metre long wall) in the Californian desert, in which a line slowly transforms, from an angular zigzag pattern to gently sloping, organic curves.