Claire Chambless (CV)

Claire Chambless (b. 1989, Houston, TX) is a Los Angeles-based sculptor and interdisciplinary artist.  She holds a BA in Art from Davidson College and an MFA in Art from the California Institute of the Arts. Claire has shown work in solo and group exhibitions at places such as the MAK Center for Art & Architecture Mackey Apartments (Los Angeles); Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia (Atlanta); Culture Lab LIC & Flux Factory (New York); La MaMa Gallery (New York); Untitled (Miami); Spring/Break (Los Angeles); Center for the Arts Eagle Rock (Los Angeles); and M. David & Co. (New York). Her work is in the permanent collection of the City of Atlanta, where she was a 2017-2018 Walthall Fellow. Claire’s work has been featured in ArtForum online, Burnaway, and Number magazine, among others. Office Space Burbank will host her first solo show with the gallery in October 2022.

Artist Statement

My sculptures, installations and other works grapple with the spatial politics of ideology and the complex relationship between femininity and aggression. My cultural background, being raised in the Southern United States, informs the visual language and mythos I use when sculpting abstracted interpretations of quotidian objects which direct or limit social space. These control objects are architecturally reimagined to create escape routes, preventing either containment or access. Many of the recurring images in my work carry strong social/political meaning (pearls/crowd control barricades). I prioritize these cultural symbols’ function as signs of physical/ideological containment, enclosure, or apparatuses of support for the physical body/psychic self. The resulting sculptures, collages, videos and other works appear caught in a state of dialectical entropy, or embodied contradiction, encouraging viewers to hold space for the higher levels of contradiction and uncertainty needed to make sense of our confusing times.