Claudia Pastomás

Claudia Pastomás (Valencia, 1998) develops a practice largely identified with installation, through which she constructs a language grounded in sculpture and painting. She holds a BA in Fine Arts and a Master’s in Artistic Production and Research from the Universitat Politècnica de València. She was recently awarded an artistic production grant in Barcelona, where she has continued her line of research.

Her work is articulated as an inquiry into material culture, systems of production, and the transformation of modes of making. It departs from a specific context: a former family-owned carpentry workshop in Valencia, understood both as a workspace and as a material and affective archive. From this close environment, she examines objects, tools, fragments, and production remnants belonging to a now-displaced manual system, placing traditional methods—many of them already obsolete—under tension with contemporary industrial logics.

Through the combination and reconfiguration of pre-existing elements by means of assemblage and systems of tension, she alters the original function of objects and activates new associations. Her methodology, archaeological in character, attends to the contingencies of process and makes visible fragments, cracks, and imperfections that would usually remain concealed, generating an experience that oscillates between familiarity and estrangement, informed by a critical awareness of her time and context.

Intuition guides the process, while architecture—understood as structure and system—determines the construction of the works. The pieces emerge from a direct and affective relationship with the surrounding forms; it is within the act of making itself that questions related to the memory of manual labor, obsolescence, and the transformation of productive systems are articulated. By displacing objects from their original function, she explores the tensions between tradition and industrialization, revisiting the cabinetmaking tradition through a reflection on how it is activated in a postmodern present.

Her career has been recognized with the “Best Emerging Artist” Award granted by Mango at SWAB Barcelona art fair, as well as with the Acquisition and Residency Prize from Piramidón Centre d’Art Contemporani. She has received the II Bodegas Faustino & Willy Ramos Chair Grant for a residency in Paris, and was a finalist in the Biennal de Mislata Miquel Navarro and the Senyera Visual Arts Awards.

Among her solo exhibitions are Ensayo de un espacio at Sistema Studio (Madrid); La extrañeza de su exposición at the MUA (Museum of the University of Alicante); Unir la grieta at Galería Vangar (Valencia); Repols at Fundación Chirivella Soriano; Coraza y Ornamento at Espacio Saceca (Sagunto); and Atractores Extraños, developed during the Artistic Residency at Espai de Creació de Quart de Poblet on the occasion of the Contemporary Artistic Creation Prize.

In the collective sphere, she has recently participated in Miradas Abiertas at Centre del Carme Cultura Contemporània (Valencia); Artists’ Book Present at Za Szkłem Gallery (Warsaw); ANTI PETRA at COAM (Madrid); Apenas Gestos at Galería Art Nueve (Murcia); and PAMPAM23 at Centre Cultural Atarazanas del Grau (Valencia).