“All power is one in source and end… My name, and yours, and the true name of the sun, or a spring of water, or an unborn child, all are syllables of the great word that is very slowly spoken by the shining of the stars. There is no other power. No other name.” 
– Ursula K. Le Guin

Ochi Projects is pleased to present Claire Colette’s Mountains, Time, and Other Devices, a solo exhibition featuring new paintings by the Los Angeles based artist. The exhibition is on view from September 15 – October 27 with an opening reception Saturday, September 15th from 6-9pm.

Mountains, Time, and Other Devices is an investigation into darkness, light, time, and mysticism. A series of quiet, abstract landscapes consider concepts of interconnectedness relating to land, the cosmos, and the self. Like the Transcendentalist painters of the 20th century, Colette links external and internal realities, and infuses her paintings with influences from tantric symbolism and elements referencing nature. The paintings themselves become the device — for meditation, or transcendence to a realm where time is illusory. Inspired by pantheism and pagan culture’s relationship to the natural world, seasons and the solar system, Colette’s imagined universes feature suns and moons floating over mountain range silhouettes held within painted frames — suggesting a multitude of worlds, cosmos or a scene from another planet altogether. Using a restrained palette and pristine surfaces finished in her own alchemical visual language, Colette transforms the sublime, and light, into formal experiences.

Claire Colette was born in Reims, France and came to California as a child. She received an MFA in painting from Mills College in Oakland, CA in 2013. Colette’s work has been exhibited nationally, including exhibitions at Ochi Projects (CA), Johansson Projects (CA), Stephen Wirtz Gallery (CA), Joshua Liner Gallery (NY), Eleanor Harwood Gallery (CA), Novella Gallery (NY), The Pit (CA), and Conduit Gallery (TX), amongst others. Colette has been an artist-in-resident at School of Visual Arts, New York and Root Division, Ca. Her work has been profiled in publications such as SF Arts Quarterly,  MAAKE Magazine, The San Francisco Chronicle, BLOUIN ARTINFO, and The Conversation Art Podcast. Colette is in the collection of the Achenbach Foundation of Graphic Arts at the de Young Museum in San Francisco. She is the 2013 winner of the Jay DeFeo MFA Prize at Mills College. In addition to her visual art practice, Colette has also released two volumes of poetry. She currently lives and works in Los Angeles where she is a member of the arts collective, Binder of Women.