Claude Closky

Reception

Closky won the "Grand prix des Arts plastiques" (1999) and the Marcel Duchamp Prize (2005) awarded by the ADIAF.

Dike Blair wrote in Artforum Magazine that "The lightness of Closky's art belies the depth of its absurdist heredity. Working in a post-modernist mode, Closky's art works combine aspects of the Situationists, Fluxus, Beckett, Tall, Daniel Buren, and Andy Warhol."

Life and career

Claude Closky has no formal training as a visual artist. He entered the ENSAD (Ecole National Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs) in 1982 but quit at the end of the first year to co-found The Ripoulin Brothers, a street artist collective, with Bla+Bla+Bla, Nina Childress, Jean Faucheur, Pierre Huyghe, Manhu, Ox, Trois carrés. In 1988 he left the group to develop his independent work, using voluntarily poor means such as drawing and printed matter.

He has participated in the Biennials of Lyon (1995), Sydney (1996), Taipei (2000), València (2001), Sharjah (2005). In 2000, the Mudam (Luxembourg Art Museum) commissioned him to conceive and manage its website, for which he made a magazine and a gallery dedicated to the internet. The site was launched at the Luxembourg Pavilion in the 2001 Venice Biennale. It presented specific works by Heath Bunting, François Curlet, Pierre Leguillon, Aleksandra Mir, Peter Kogler, David Shrigley, among others. Since 2005 he has taught at the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris. In 2012 he curated This & There, an exhibition to celebrate the tenth year of the Pavilion, Palais de Tokyo Laboratory for Creation (Paris) which presented the work of 74 artists in 74 different spaces.

Work

The work of Claude Closky is mainly immaterial. Language is his model to articulate images, text, numbers, and sounds collected in our environment, or made in his studio. Although reluctant to producing objects and spectacular effects, Closky's work still addresses issues about visibility and space appropriation.

Claude Closky's projects always find alternative ways to emancipate themselves from the formats imposed by the sites where they are exhibited. He seeks to point out the contradictions of our contemporary society and its representations, but also to question the role of art as producer of a cultural consensus and set of values. His works confront and question our environment, the conditions and benefits of artistic production, its relation to an audience.