Drawing from the visual languages of fashion, advertising, urban space and product display, Claus examines how images operate as carriers of meaning and desire within contemporary consumer culture. Her works on paper and canvas function as provisional displays that question notions of value, representation and identity. Accessory objects - such as the bag, often considered secondary or decorative - are placed at the centre of the composition, functioning as vessels of meaning, identity and 'economic value'.

Text written on the occasion of 'Euromillions Drawing series', solo at Blanco, Ghent by Oriana Lemmens and Nikolaas Verstraeten, 2022.

"Against art’s general inability to predict its own timelessness, there is the abruptness of time projected in whatever one decides to make.
In her drawing series Euromillions, Ines Claus seems to favor the anachronistic. Everything that is drawn,
adopted the glance of over- ness and accepted the charm of its postmortem status.
A nostalgia not necessarily seeking restoration, nor hierarchical comparison,
but displaying rather an instinct towards the hollowed-out, the emptied and exploiting it as artistic liberty. (...)

Once depicted, objects and forms start addressing each other as equals. Lines, words, emblems hiding but their silhouettes. The drawings vainly carry their layers, show-off their trials and errors. They’re eulogies disinterested in pedestaling, testaments of a classless class, of ideology- free observing (if there were such a thing)—blatantly enjoying.

In the Euromillions drawings no pictorial distinction is made between a Tensoplast box, details of a Hermès piece or the frivolous aesthetic of medieval heraldry. Then again, the works are not proclaiming to cause a disruption in the ‘cultivated’ allures of aesthetic authorities. Forms now find their essence in attributing to the drawings’ ornamental play but, be that as it may, will always remember where they came from in the first place.

Preparing for this text, it was pleasantly frustrating to find a form of writing ‘tailored’ to these drawings, that would not simply resort to listing its components or describing the nature of their lines. It’s tempting and beautiful to articulate and indicate the ornamental dogs attached to transparent leashes, gates behind which no estates lurk but color panes, words overestimating the size of their frames or ‘villains’ exploiting the endearment of a pink purse. However, it is not just naming these anecdotal elements that guarantees understanding, just as it is not merely an arbitrary number on a ticket that assures a price. A promise just as hollow as the conviction that describing equals comprehension, is the idea that the anecdotal equals the banal. It’s doubtful that there’s a world to discover beyond the scenography of outdatedly hip brands, fading ornaments, fast-drawn figures, swirly syllables. Perhaps these drawings settle for the nonchalant acceptance that there is none?"

BIO

Claus was a resident at Cité International des Arts Paris (FR). She took part in various solo-and group shows; Claus exhibited at Footnote Gallery/Bookstore and Bar (Ghent,B), T-Space (Antwerp,B), Ercola (Antwerp,B), Synnika Space (Frankfurt,DE), Rufus Gallery (Ghent,B), Pizza Gallery (Antwerp,B), Nodenaysteen (Ghent,B), Red Herring Salon (Antwerp,B), LRRG (Deurne, B), Komplot (Brussels,B), The Wunderwall (Sofie Van de Velde & Plus One Gallery, Antwerp), Art Au Centre (Liège,B), Platvvorm (Deinze,B), Publiek Park by young friends of S.M.A.K (Ghent,B), Musée de la Boverie (Liège,B), 019 (Ghent,B), BLANCO (Ghent,B), ‘De Nieuwe Garde’; by Kunst in Huis, Zuiderspershuis (Antwerp,B) Campo Victoria (Ghent,B), Drawing Centre Diepenheim (Nl), Pleasure Island (Ostend, B) and Abc Klubhuis (Antwerp,B).