2024 - Kastljós program, RÚV National Icelandic TV, interview about Lost Track at Gallery Port
2024 - The Reykjavik Grapevine, “Different but connected: an exhibition straddling worlds” by Catharine Fulton, IS
2022 - Stundin, “Ég ákvað að þeir gætu haft rangt fyrir sér ” by Magga & Ragga Weisshappel, IS
2022 - Morgunblaðið, “Horfðu til himins með höfuðið lágt” by Jóna Gréta Hilmarsdóttir, IS
2022 - Stundin, “Undið af veruleikum”by Magga & Ragga Weisshappel, IS
2022 - Ostsee Zeitung “Junge Kunst Unterm Hammer”, Ahrenshoop, Germany
2022 - Vísir “Undirmeðvitundin ræður loka útlitinu” by Dóra Júlia Agnarsdóttir, IS
2021 - ARTZINE “D44 CLAIRE PAUGAM: ATTEMPTING THE EMBRACE N°31 – PROCESSING THE UNKNOWN” by Andrea Ágústa Aðalsteinsdóttir
2021 - The Reykjavik Grapevine “Art Picks, Attempting the Embrace n°31” by Desirai Thompson
2019 - Artzine, “IT’S BUZZING WITH ENERGIES”: UNPACKING THE EURO-ICELANDIC ART EXCHANGE by Claire-Julia Hill
https://artzine.is/its-buzzing-with-energies-unpacking-the-euro-icelandic-art-exchange
2019 - Artzine, “The last exhibition at Listastofan” by Ana Victoria bruno
https://artzine.is/the-last-exhibition-at-listastofan-a-conversation-with-founder-martyna-daniel/
2019 - The Reykjavík Grapevine #2, "Versatile Uprising" by Tara Njála Ingvarsdóttir
2017 - Capacious Journal Vol. 1 No. 1, USA
"Forgotten rituals of yearning" by Agnieszka Anna Wolodzko
http://capaciousjournal.com
2017 - UMBIGO art and design magazine, issue #63, Portugal
"Claire Paugam - Attempting the Embrace" by Barabara Valentina
Claire Paugam, a young multidisciplianry artist, born in France in 1991, who works on the landscape and its relation with the body, creating relationships between different textures and scales. She got her degree in Iceland where she develops her work while travelling aroun the world.
Claire Paugam works in layes, overlapping planes, textures and colours. Her supports are video, photography, installation and performance. She also creates sculptures and small abjects she uses as part of other works, namely installations. She also frequently uses her body and the bodies of other people as disruptor element or as constituent part of the landscape, with a thorugh scenic component. the textures are used to unify body and nature, as a reflection over the universal, composing a kind of sensorial of the landscape. Claire evokes this way the texture as a sensorial medium to remind us that we are all “cosmic dust” by composing an image with a rock and a peice of meat, like she did in Attempting the Embrace n°29 or n°25 and n°26, where we can barely distinguish between the meat and the rock. Claire does not take life, does not isolate the Human flesh, she animates an inanimate object as if she has blown into it the breath of life.
From her work stand out small movies and photos taken from the videos, where we can see compositionswith natural textures, always connected with the human. Attempting the Embrace n°27 is filmed in Iceland and Claire states that it has no beginning nor end because it is a loop. In this video we see several landscapes where there is almost always a human presence. We also see a mouth which inserts and licks different rocks, as if the taste of the rock was a part of the sensorial experience that we can have with the object. A kind of communion reminding us of Robert A. Heinlein’s “grok“ in Stranger in a Strange Land. In Attempting the Embrace n°20 the inclusion of pieces made by her, in the landscape, is done in such a way that nature works as just another layer of the object. As if the piece had been born in that landscape or that grass had grown inside that work a long time ago, a bit like sometimes the roots of the trees tear the road tar, or like a weaving machine weaves a single piece with different types of threads. For Claire all could be reduced (or amplified, we would say) to matter, it does not matter if it is the human body, the landscape, or an object worked by the artist, she takes an interest in textures, in what one cannot see on a first look “When I look at a stone there is a visual analogy, I see similarities with the texture of meat, raw meat. Icannot explain, it just happens, I recognize an intermediate texture”.
Most of the works come together with her texts. these texts are a complement to the enjoyment of the works and don’t have an explaining nature. Sometimes they give us clues about what the artist would be thinking about or with that piece, they act as part of the work but not as a descriptive memory or as an indication of what she wants the viewer to think. Claire stressed in a thread of emails:” (…) it is the essence of my artistic practice to encompass different issues and scales (which I call visual analogy)”.
At the website www.clairepaugam.com we can see her works, her résumé, and news about her exhibitions. We can also get in touch with her. This new digital approach to the life and the work of the artist changes the assumptions of enjoying the works and of the feeling of exclusivity, and even of a certain enclosure in which art and artist have been living during the last centuries. In the book The Art of Performance: From Futurism to the Present, RoseLee Golberg writes about the influence of Internet in the 21st century performance: “In this flowing network, the artistic performance - multi-disciplinary, with several layers, and boosted by the media - ideally fits in the online communication with audiences from the present and the future. As such, it is increasingly being a medium chosen by artists emerging in the big cities, as well as by those who enter the art world coming from more remote locations, through online platforms like Vimeo and Youtube, (…), together with personnal blogs and websites, resorting to more and more sophisticated formats.” Claire also produces textile patterns for a brand of clothing accessories, and some musicla video clips, keeping her aesthetic consistency, but applied to the daily use or to comitions. We cannot help but reflect on the ways artists subsist through parallel works or ordered works, which is a part of the Story of Art History. Claire is, undoubtedly, still growing as an artist: her work is already consistent and coherent, but sometimes it lacks some artistic maturity that makes way to a certain depuration. In her practice we may see both the will to animate pieces and objects, and sometimes we may feel that the objects are the ones boosting the reification of the landscape, always raising questions about the matter, or what is or is not tangible to the look.
2017 - JIR - Femmes magazine, "L'analogie visuelle comme processus créatif" by Laïla Bapoo
article based on a conference I gave about my art practice, Reunion Island, France
2016 - Interview for RÚV (Icelandic TV channel) Kastljós program
https://youtu.be/4zMJKXg_9nc
all press
2024 - Kastljós program, RÚV National Icelandic TV, interview about Lost Track at Gallery Port, IS
2024 - The Reykjavik Grapevine, “Different but connected: an exhibition straddling worlds” by Catharine Fulton, IS
2022 - Stundin, “Ég ákvað að þeir gætu haft rangt fyrir sér ” by Magga & Ragga Weisshappel, IS
2022 - Morgunblaðið, “Horfðu til himins með höfuðið lágt” by Jóna Gréta Hilmarsdóttir, IS
2022 - Stundin, “Undið af veruleikum”by Magga & Ragga Weisshappel, IS
2022 - Ostsee Zeitung “Junge Kunst Unterm Hammer”, Ahrenshoop, GE
2022 - Vísir, “Undirmeðvitundin ræður loka útlitinu” by Dóra Júlia Agnarsdóttir, IS
2021 - Artzine, “D44 Claire Paugam: Attempting the Embrace - processing the unknown” by Andrea Ágústa Aðalsteinsdóttir, IS
2021 - The Reykjavik Grapevine, “Art Picks, Attempting the Embrace n°31” by Desirai Thompson, IS
2021 - Morgunblaðið, “Drottna yfir landslagi eða vera hluti af því?” by Ragnheiður Birgirsdóttir, IS
2021 - Liberté magazine, “Body contact” by Charly Rappo, Switzerland
2020 - RÚV TV, Meninngin culture program, interview about Vestur í bláinn, IS
2020 - RÚV webiste, West into the Blue, all over Reykjavik by Alexander Elliott, IS
2020 - RÚV rás 1, radio, Lofthelgi - 8. september 2020 , IS
2020 - Stundin, “Gera röddum innflytjenda hátt undir höfði” by Gabríel Benjamin, IS
2019 - Artzine, “IT’S BUZZING WITH ENERGIES”: UNPACKING THE EURO-ICELANDIC ART EXCHANGE by Claire-Julia Hill, IS
2019 - Artzine, “The last exhibition at Listastofan” by Ana Victoria bruno, IS
2019 - Artzine, "Versatile Uprising: Lifandi Formleysa" by Sólveig Eir Stewart, IS
2019 - The Reykjavík Grapevine, #2 - 2019, "Versatile Uprising" by Tara Njála Ingvarsdóttir, IS
2018 - RÚV radio, Vidsja show, "Tilraun að faðmlagi í janúar" by Starkaður Sigurðarson, IS (on air 29/01/2018)
2017 - UMBIGO art and design magazine, issue #63, "Claire Paugam - Attempting the Embrace" by Barabara Valentina, Portugal
2017 - Capacious Journal, Vol. 1, No. 1, "Forgotten rituals of yearning" by Agnieszka Anna Wolodzko, USA
2017 - THE ICEVIEW TI online, Icelandic art and literature magazine, IS
2017 - JIR - Femmes magazine, "L'analogie visuelle comme processus créatif" by Laïla Bapoo, Reunion Island, FR
2016 - Interview for RÚV (Icelandic TV channel) Kastljós program "https://www.clairepaugam.com/Attempting-the-Embrace-n-26"