Since 2003 Claire Fahys’s work has been orchestrating a manifold exploration of the city and its spatial ordering. In an attempt
to render the infinite complexities of the urban landscape, her paintings often resemble labyrinths juxtaposing a series of intricate
compositions. Predominant in her work is the use of perspective and spatial manipulation, which, combined with highly detailed
sketches, eventually manage to create an impression of vertiginous, imploding spaces.

The effect created is visually potent: shapes, forms and structures succeed one another in a highly original fashion: discrete
figures are frequently made to share contours; a form often gives way to another by melting into it; points of junction are
turned into places of antagonism. Claire’s paintings are populated by bizarre drawings superimposed on structures assembled
from fragments of architectural patterns − elements drawn from different sources, which, when posited side by side, evoke an
image of atopic displacement.

These meticulously contrived city- scapes often succeed in supplying, simultaneously, a profile as well as a panoramic view
of the portrayed ‘city’. This effect is partially accomplished by juxtaposing topographic maps to frontal and high-angle views
of streets or urban corners, different points of view that are combined to form a unique vision.

On certain instances, flat tints occupy large sections of the composition, as a result of which practice a caesura is created in the
depth of the field, which reinforces the effect of perspective. In other paintings, a multitude of checkered surfaces, intersecting
lines, geometrical forms, as well as more straightforwardly representative objects (such as windows, pipes, chimneys, etc.)
are all ordered on the canvas in a chaotic yet at the same time structured way.

Claire’s use of a variety of ways to represent space thus gives rise to optical effects that arouse in the spectator a feeling
of disequilibrium, of instability, when faced with the work. Displaying a clear fascination with disorder, one of the fundamental
elements of contemporary city life, Claire’s work aspires to capture the confusion that imbues the modern urban experience.
The interrelated notions of construction, deconstruction and reconstruction have all informed and helped propel Claire’s
practice. For the development of each one of Claire’s imaginary cities a complex system of stratification is conceived and put
to use, as a result of which a series of illusionary effects begins to form on the canvas.

Each one of her paintings in fact emanates from a chance encounter, from an intuitive choice of shapes and forms she comes
across while travelling, or simply wandering around in the streets of cities she already knows. These fragments she documents
as photographs, which eventually end up compiling a large library of instants, or of fleeting moments of travel. She then draws
from this depository of real space-turned-archive, in order to construct an imaginary space-time, which is both new and unique.
Each element entering in the composition is therefore submitted to a process of re-contextualization, as if it were a word inscribed
in a new text. This ‘language’, omnipresent in the paintings, constitutes the result of a long-lasting experimentation ultimately
stemming from a desire to depict, on the canvas, the mutual dependency of space and memory.

In terms of technique, the materials employed are considerably varied, ranging from photo transfer, to collage, gouache, use
of inks, pencil, monotypes, acrylics, etc. Hence, every painting deliberately aims to combine a multitude of textures, in an effort
to reflect the diversity of the urban surface, as well as the way in which history and the passing of time leave their marks on it.