Claude Closky

This summer, Horsecross presents Love and Fear (2007), a major new commission for Threshold artspace by the French artist Claude Closky, recipient of Le Prix Marcel Duchamp in 2005. Love and Fear has been acquired for the permanent collection of the recently opened Threshold artspace and is showing as part of a new group exhibition Body Language curated by Iliyana Nedkova.

Closky's new work Love and Fear brings a degree of intensity, absurdity and further satirical twist to his oeuvre. The qualities, which persist are Closky's ongoing affection for the primacy of the word in contemporary art, site-considered approach to place, and disarming bravado when exposing controversies in life. The romantic, love-hate relationship, involving simultaneous or alternating emotions of love and enmity, philia and phobia, silence and noise, is at the formal and contextual core of Love and Fear.

Born in Paris in 1963, Closky is known for his subtle and witty style. He often plays with the rules, codes and hierarchy of the images, sounds and words from popular culture to shift the meaning unexpectedly. Recently Closky exhibited at Museum of Modern Art, New York; Musée National d'Art Moderne, Centre Pompidou and Grand Palais, Paris; Museum of Contemporary Art, The Hague; Museum Ludwig, Cologne; MADRE Museum, Naples; Latvian National Museum of Art, Riga and National Gallery of Fine Art, Sofia.

Love and Fear is premiered in the context of Body Language -- a new group exhibition which investigates how artists use the technique of 'people watching' to push the boundaries of the traditional genre of figurative painting. The new cinematic figuration defines studio portraits and choreographed performances, improvised documentaries and computer game characters. Invariably artists use the primal communication of body language employing gestures and postures; eyes and smiles; masques and tattoos, and even sounds and colours in their works.

The exhibition features a dozen new additions and selected works from the Threshold artspace permanent collection by Claude Closky, Brody Condon, Matt Hulse, Dan Perjovschi, Rafaël Rozendaal, Kosta Tonev and others.

Claude Closky: LOVE AND FEAR
Kurator: Iliyana Nedkova