Claude Closky obtained a Baccalaureate C in Paris in 1980. He continued his studies in Paris at the Ecole des Arts Décoratifs. In 1984, he was one of the co-founders of the collective, Les frères Ripoulins [1], a group that was part of Free Figuration movement. During this period, Claude Closky used advertising surfaces in the streets of Paris and New York to exhibit his works. At that time, his work focused on compositions, where the forms struggled with industrial logos. He transposed this new research onto computer.

Claude Closky produced his first books and his "first" drawings in 1989.

In a position similar to that of Anna Karina in one of Jean-Luc Godard's films, where she walks along the beach shouting: "What can I do? I don't know what to do!", Claude Closky's drawings start from a simple situation: "I haven't got the faintest idea". This point of departure turns into the desire to show that he doesn't have an idea: "I use this inability to do anything, to be able to do something". A little similar to the experience of Marcel Broodthaers, who came to art for want of anything better to do: "I also wondered if I couldn't sell something" is what the latter wrote on an exhibition card in the 1960's.

And so, in Claude Closky we see the emergence of a circle with raised hand, an eyelash, a few beauty spots, etc., so many drawings that require no particular technical ability, where efficiency abandons aesthetics. This lack of something better to do becomes the work’s driving force. The artist starts of with some sideslips in his daily life to construct the association of ideas. New classifications come into being, induced by the objects classed. To take some examples: "classification of brands by the number they use: Mobile 1 ; Action 2 ; Aquafresh 3 ; Isio 4 ; Label 5 ; le 5 de Savoie ; 7 up... ; It's the same for brands from A to Z: Craven A ; Agnès B up to Télé Z." [2].

There were also Parfums numérotés, 1994. A brand’s sign loses its value as reading becomes more fluid.

The books play on the notion of inventory. The catalogue Closky (1989) contains so many works in the birthing process, forthcoming productions [3] The 'carnets autographes' form several series of drawings where the integrity is defined in terms of the number of pages in each volume. The text content of the books is dealt with from various angles. Claude Closky treats existing series using their original taxonomic principles (Les 365 jours de l'année 1991 classés par ordre chronologique – The 365 days of 1991 in chronological order); he then re-works them using an unusual taxonomic principle (Les 365 jours de l'année 1991 classés par ordre de taille – the 365 days of 1991 classed in order of size); he invents subjective series organised in a conventional manner (Tout ce que je peux avoir, 1994); he provides an update on various types of perceptible correspondence from a singular point of view [3]. The artist also composes books, which give a succession of collages where the raw material comes from magazine advertisements: "My work bears on all that daily life has made banal, on things that are never called into question, on the automatic elements that make up daily life". (1995)

As with his books, Claude Closky's videos deal with pre-existing realities (advertising, cinema...). He constructs and dismantles successions of sequences; he removes the causes, leaving only the effects in film narration. He makes loops of sensational elements – which, in this sense, is close to some of Dara Birnbaum's work – out of any context, he fixes the effect in the decorative. 200 bouches à nourrir (1994) shows a selection of instants of "food disappearing into mouths" taken from three days of television programmes; En avant (1995) is an accumulation of movements from a hundred action films borrowed from the video club; in Ski à Val d'Isère (1997) or Un tour à la campagne (1997) images from video games cross the screen like so many new space-time entities. Claude Closky's videogrammes also raise questions about the bonds between language and series (Hydrastar, 1997).

He also sometimes records the raw material for a video himself, before re-working it, as in Blanc, rouge, bordeaux, gris métallisé, noir (1995) which represents the regular flow of traffic on a motorway – the appearance of the cars is arranged according to the colour of the vehicle. In Claude Closky’s video montages, all the images have the same value. An equivalence that holds for the work as a whole, following the example of the principles set out by Robert Filliou (the "well done", "badly done" and "not done" have the same artistic importance).

Claude Closky uses photography – original or not: Auchan (1992), company logos that use a letter for their visual identity, which he places in an alphabet.

"Their form (design) makes them signifiers in their own right, representing a specific brand, and their content (the letter) consists of neutral elements, unable to make any sense unless associated with other letters. It is the contradictory reading of the same sign that provokes tension." (Claude Closky). In 100 photos qui ne sont pas des photos de salles de bains et 100 photos qui ne sont pas des photos de cuisines (1995), he shows chromos where everything is set out to coincide with the largest possible spectrum of our common desires, running counter to any kind of singularity, a standardised aesthetic. The work 1000 objets de 1 à 1000 francs (1993) brings together reproductions taken from supermarket catalogues, in a suite that makes price the unit for measuring desire: "I’ve simply taken their logic a little further, I took it seriously."

Claude Closky is a multi-media artist who tackles sound (audio version of Plus de 300 petits prix, 1992) the object (Toutes les façons de fermer une caisse en carton, 1989), video (Brrrraoumm, 1995), drawing (Sans titre (1500 frises), 1992), photography (Objets en lévitation dans la cuisine et Soucoupes volantes, 1996), wall-paper (Sans Titre (Cosmétiques), 1997) and books (Mon catalogue, 1999), as well as installations (O.S.G, 1997-98), interventions on Internet [4] and in the urban environment (Blabla, 1998, Paris, Pyramides Metro station). A productive diversity where taxonomy finds itself linked with an existential preoccupation: " the fear of inactivity and its corollary: the need for distraction and the habit of moving from one means of expression to another, to avoid weakening one’s capacity to react quickly and precisely" [3]. Claude Closky plays with the saturation of signs in our society and tries to call the codes into question: "I use things that are banal and end up becoming transparent. I recycle. I use ‘Junk Mail’: advertising handouts, newspapers, TV images for my videos … or my own time when I copy out the phone book." (1997)

His work comes after the Pop Art series, the re-photography of "simulationism" and the recycling of industrial articles, in a minimalist and Pop aesthetic of the "appropriators". In a world where advertising dictates society’s standards, artists exploit this same system of values.

"I have chosen to develop an artistic work for the same reasons that I chose to open an account with Société Générale: to help me live my independence to the full …"[5] Claude Closky’s work takes a distanced view of our advertising environment: he contents himself with isolating the images and words of this universe to give us a better view of the mechanism. His work could be compared with that of a diverse range of artists, like Jenny Holzer, who conceives her productions on the model of the slogan and uses the structures of the media, Sylvie Fleury, who transposes and exploits the world of advertising ("I show things as they are and, in this manner, I also expose the instruments and mechanisms that make them what they are"), or even Barbara Kruger, who plays with the clichés tossed to consumers, and Richard Prince, who worked for a time in the cuttings service of publishers Time-Life in New York, before appropriating merchandising imagery. All works that act as beacons.

"Take your body actively in hand. Watch the values of distribution. […] Don’t wait for the first symptoms. Never underestimate your inspiration. Take part in our great autumn competition…"[6]

Dominique Garrigues

[1] Pierre Huyghe, in particular, was a member of the collective.

[2] Olivier Zahm and Claude Closky, "Ma petite entreprise", Purple Prose, September 1994.

[3] See F. Paul, Claude Closky, Paris, Hazan, 1999 [particularly the comparison made between the drawings of Claude Closky and W. Wegman].

[4] www.arpla.univ-paris8.fr/closky/

[5] Claude Closky, Purple Prose, March 1999 (answer in slogan form).

[6] Claude Closky, Osez, Paris, éd. galerie Jennifer Flay, 1994.