teachers

Claude

Closky

Studio professor

Born in 1963 in Paris. Lives and works in Paris.

Subtle, minimal and playful, Claude Closky’s work defies all codes and systems of logic, be they metric, mathematical, alphabetical or grammatical. He observes, reclassifies, combines, accumulates, cuts, assembles, glues, draws and photographs the infraordinary. Colouring the everyday with humour and the absurd, he hijacks advertising codes with a certain poetry and, with a certain rebelliousness, he turns all order on himself. From the simplest drawings - executed using a ballpoint pen and a sheet of paper - to video, photography, collage, painting and audio, as well as book publishing and internet sites, he shows great eclecticism of means in creating left field spaces and throwing spanners in the works of overly well-oiled mechanisms. After a brief stint at the Ecole des Arts Décoratifs in Paris, which he left after a year, he co-founded Les Frères Ripoulin, who, in the 1980s, disseminated their pictorial repurposing of the city's advertising posters. In the Nineties, Claude Closky asserted his own style in a more conceptual vein. 

His work is found in private and public collections and his exhibitions have toured the world. He received the Grand Prix National d’Arts Plastiques in 1999 and was awarded the Marcel Duchamp Prize in 2005.