Claudia Comte’s large-format sculptures and graphic paintings exhibit a formal precision that playfully conceals the hands-on practice of working with organic materials so integral to the artist’s practice. At Spreepark, Comte will produce an artwork that reinterprets the Monte Carlo Drive, a former ride with a track course of 555 meters that loops within the park.

At the time of its operation as an amusement park, visitors flocked to the park to drive along Monte Carlo Drive in miniature petrol-powered Corvettes and Ford Thunderbirds. Since the closure of the

amusement park in 2001, Monte Carlo Drive has been reclaimed by park vegetation. Drawn to the symbolic history of the ride as a site of fantasia and rewilding, Comte has devised a painting installation that calls attention to this “lost place” with the changing setting of Spreepark’s environs. Lines, Curves and Zigzags (Monte Carlo Drive) is a striking environmental installation that aims to connect the past and present of Spreepark through its sensitivity to the park’s original and contemporary design.

Foot passage is actively encouraged by the environmental installation, which guides visitors on a scenic route through Spreepark. The installation’s monochromatic pattern features over 2,000 lines that progress from a single straight line to varying rhythmic forms. This graphic transformation from straight to curved lines is gradual and perceptible only when moving in relation to the painting, either by walking or running along it, or when viewing it at a distance, such as from the nearby Ferris wheel. Movement is central to the experience of the artwork as an optical illusion that appears to make the ground shift. This sense of movement echoes the sensation of the original ride, while offering a sustainable vision of art in green spaces.

For Lines, Curves and Zigzags (Monte Carlo Drive),Comte has worked closely with a team of landscape architects to underscore the codependency of art, design and nature in this project. In following the route of Monte Carlo Drive, the artwork also transforms with the nature that has grown up around and over the track. The installation takes into consideration the ruins of past cultural artifacts and the seasonal growth of the surrounding shrubs and trees, encouraging new perspectives of this palimpsest as visitors move through the park.