CLAUDE CLOSKY
(France, 1963)


Untitled (NASDAQ), 2003
installation, wallpaper, silkscreen print
Courtesy Galleria Enrico Fornello, Prato,
Galerie Laurent Godin, Paris
Photo © Joséphine de Bère



Multiples are the preferred vehicle for Claude Closky, whether in the form of inexpensively printed books, unlimited editions of videos or affordable posters. Similarly the World Wide Web has become an appealing medium for him in which to work. Untitled (NASDAQ) plays with the endless flood of data generated by stock market activities. In their vastness these figures seem to loose their singular information value and merge in an ornamental pattern. Closky conceived this piece as a wallpaper that he offers outside the distribution channels of the art system on the digital marketplace in the Internet. The wallpaper has a long history. Luxurious golden wallpaper made of leather was used by the Baroque European aristocracy, which was then replaced by silk from China and later on by paper from France. While the bourgeoisie was rising to economic power, it started to emulate aspects of aristocratic lifestyle to represent its new social condition. Part of this new self representation was based on the aestheticization of everyday life. Wallpapers were used for the decoration of interior spaces to demonstrate culture and taste. Free of any moralistic undertones, Closky plays in his work with one of the icons of our time: figures representing monetary value. His wallpaper visualizes the spirit of an era in which the omnipresence of economic criteria is generating its own aesthetic language. Being stripped bare of its information value, the aesthetic surface of figures and graphs reveals to what extent quantitative parameters are governing the world we live in.







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