20 September — 8 November

Opening Reception: 20 September,  1 - 4PM
Viewing Hours: Thursday by appointment, Friday 3:30-6:30pm, Saturday 12 - 3PM

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.

Sofia Clausse

Sofía Clausse (b.1989) is an artist originally from Argentina, has lived in Portugal and the USA, and is currently based in London. She completed her BFA at the Rhode Island School of Design (2014), and the postgraduate program at the Royal Academy Schools in London (2022).

Her mediums of choice are painting, works on paper, ceramics, and diagramming; and she invents her own tools and systems through which to generate the work. She uses lines, symbols, and words as the main elements of her works. Her intuitive choice of materials is based on their simplicity and humbleness, but mainly on their inherent ways of transforming themselves through her process. Her practice is based on this question of what it means to belong and become, while constantly changing.

Central to her research are ideas of interconnection and spirituality, which she explores in her diagrams. In these wall-based works, which are her form of concrete poetry, she combine text, symbols, and lines to generate a new form of reading and expressing information. Her paintings of looping lines explore ideas of cycles, infinity, and repetition, and they act like a labyrinth where one can get intentionally lost in order to find oneself and one's path once again. This interweaving and knotted line is similar to the path taken in the studio, in which all the works are connected as if through an invisible looping line, always on the quest to see where else it will go, and what else it will become. Clausse follows a circular and alchemical way of production in the studio – in which leftover material, learnings, or processes transform and become the next. In this way, all of the works come together to form a visual cosmos, where symbols, words, lines, material, and thoughts are enmeshed in constellations of meaning, through which to learn, listen, create, and transform.

Most recently, Sofía Clausse has been awarded an artist grant from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation (2023), which supported her on a two-month residency at PADA Studios in Lisbon, Portugal (2023). She has also received the Almacantar Art Prize (2022) after graduating from the Royal Academy Schools. Her work has been the subject of solo exhibitions internationally at Municipal Bonds, San Francisco, USA (2023); Slugtown Gallery, Newcastle, UK (2022); the Royal Academy of Arts, London (2022), Eve Leibe Gallery, London (2021); and Kupfer, curated by Inês Geraldes Cardoso, London (2021). She has exhibited in group shows in UK and US including: Where's the Frame, London (2022); Grove Collective, London (2021); Guts Gallery, London (2021); Royal Academy of Arts, London (2020); Eve Leibe Gallery (2020); Nationale Gallery, Portland, USA (2020); Special Special Gallery, New York, USA (2020); Amalgama Women Artists from Latin America, London (2020); The Shop at Sadie Coles HQ, London (2019); Ginny Projects, London (2019).