Claude Closky

Claude Closky is an award-winning, conceptual French artist known for producing offbeat works in which he compiles and collates everyday items, words, and data, before giving them an intriguing, often humorous, skew. 

Closky, who lives and works in Paris, is largely self-taught, having attended the Ecole Nationale Superieure d’Arts Decoratifs, but opting to leave at the end of the first year. 

He works across a variety of media that ranges from painting, drawing and photography to video and digital forms, which he brings together in creations that are often experimental, innovative and even absurd, but always thought-provoking. Closky’s art has been described as defying classification, but key themes are evident, such as a predilection for reassembling and resequencing facts, figures and motifs. Advertising posters, magazine headlines and slogans are among the elements dissected and rebuilt with playful ingenuity, unpredictability and humor, alongside telephone numbers and other lists that would be mundane in their original form. Early works include a list of the Friday 13ths from the year 1 until 1991 – 3415 in total. 

A talented and successful graphic designer, Closky was awarded the Prix Marcel Duchamp in 2005. His work has featured in several biennials and been shown worldwide, including at prestigious institutions, such as the Centre Pompidou, Paris and MOMA, New York.