Rising Smoke with Three Cacti (ocean blue gradient)

Claudia Comte’s edition is a screen print that features two pictorial elements that the artist has returned to repeatedly in her practice: the curved line and the cactus. In this unique work, three cacti float above a background composed of vertically oriented lines whose waves are like those of the ocean referred to in the title of the image. The emphasis on the outline of these two elements creates a synthesis between them, where the blank space of the striking Rives paper on which there are printed, shines through. Comte adds colour to the otherwise black and white composition with the inclusion at the base of the image of the “blue gradient” named in the edition’s title. This hint of an ocean creates a playful juxtaposition of figure and ground – the basic grammar of all two-dimensional representation – where the three cacti float innocently above the water. Their placement in this landscape is out of context, water standing in place of an arid desert, with the undulating lines rising from the water to form an abstract background for the hovering plants.