Claire Morgan – "Perpetually at the Centre" Solo Exhibition

Text and images by Chen Chi-Hsiang. Dates: October 14 to December 23. Venue: Karsten Greve Gallery. Claire Morgan (born 1980) is Ireland’s most representative artist, a shining new star in today’s art world, internationally acclaimed and recognized as one of the most talented artists of her generation. Growing up in the Irish countryside, nature naturally became the instinctive connection for her artistic expression. She is famous for dramatic environmental installations featuring insect and small animal specimens, plant seeds, and colorful plastic sheets. Her work revolves around the contradictory psychology of human relationships with the surrounding natural environment, embodying her ecological and ethical artistic practice. The artist says, “Every small animal tells a story. I like to invent a sculptural scene.”

Her captivating installations possess an elegant purity, generating incredible empathy through the repetitive power of rigorous geometric forms (such as circles, squares, or rectangles) and from these frozen yet dynamic hesitations. She excels at densely suspending transparent nylon threads holding mosquitoes, flies, small mice, birds, foxes, peacock specimens, etc., alongside plant seeds (dandelion seeds and thistle stamens) and colorful plastic sheets floating in space. This creates confusion akin to capturing animals within the center of surrounding clouds. She reshapes motion, creating scenarios of natural fear and unease. The artist states, “Exploring the flesh, death, and eternal illusion of animals in my work is my own way of trying to reach a compromise with these things.” Her installations present stillness merely as appearance, with permanent codes; these sites summarize the beauty and sorrow of our fragile lives.

In the solo exhibition Perpetually at the Centre, Claire Morgan explores the relationship between humans and their surrounding nature through contemplation of natural forces and self-reflection. Under human manipulation and dominance, which reflects the gradual destruction of the natural environment, her installations objectify this reality; animal specimens seem adapted to a consumerist world of waste. These suspended sculptures, characterized by permanently frozen bodies, unfold between life and death, and the organic and the artificial. The exhibition contemplates the power of nature and the mortal self-exploration of humanity. Vast oceans, forests, and late nights are portrayed as abysses. Always a profound subject of meditation, they reveal human vulnerability until the transformation of overall existence. This reflection does not ignore the ongoing humanitarian crisis in the Mediterranean (...), extreme climate change, and warning signs of future humanitarian crises, which also inspire the artist’s attention.

In Claire Morgan’s work, nature is astonishingly perfect and immobile. These ambiguous animal specimens’ vivid, ambiguous existence contrasts with the fragile geometric shapes created by this “kind assembler” using nylon threads, with dandelion seeds or plastic fragments suspended on them. In the artist’s world, there is a universe threatened by human intrusion and cynicism, resisting its own beauty. It embodies the perfection of geometric and minimalist scenarios, so light in structural fragility that they can disappear with a simple breath of wind. So, how can we not question our behavior in life? (Note – This text is translated from excerpts of the exhibition catalog.)