Prix Marcel Duchamp - Claude Closky

Claude Closky is the fifth winner of the Prix Marcel Duchamp, and like Thomas Hirschhorn, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Mathieu Mercier and Carole Benzaken before him, he has been invited to create a work to be shown at the Centre Pompidou. His Manège can be seen in Espace 315 from 17 May to 31 July 2006.

Closky was honoured by the jury "for the maturity and complexity of a visual language that he has succeeded in raising to universality." He is an omnipresent figure in Paris, where he is represented by Galerie Laurent Godin, and has had more than 200 exhibitions abroad, showing in Germany, Switzerland, Italy, the United States, Japan and elsewhere.

The artist is no stranger to the Centre Pompidou: he designed the admission ticket and the wallpaper for the administrative offices.

Manège, especially conceived for Espace 315, consists of 16 flat screens regularly spaced along the walls, showing moving images that shift from screen to screen before being followed by another. These graphic or photographic sequences depict actions, gestures decomposed into stills. They are accompanied as they move round by a repeating instrumental, a jingle. Manège marries progression (the succession of images) with repetition (the jingle) but relies more particularly on the passage of linear time marked by the punctual division of continuous movement.

The flat screens are more like paintings than video monitors: their role is only to pass on what is given them. Although now a familiar feature on gallery walls, the screens are entirely ordinary and merely passive in their role.

The circulation of the image from one screen to the next relies on the cutting, the image disappearing abruptly to appear equally abruptly elsewhere, drawing the viewer's eye behind it. Only the jingle escapes to fill the whole space, parodying the surround sound of the cinema.

PRIX MARCEL DUCHAMP 2005

NOMINATED ARTISTS KADER ATTIA, b. Dugny 1970, lives in Paris – multimedia GILLES BARBIER, b. Vanuatu 1965, lives in Marseille – drawings, installations OLIVIER BLANCKART, b. Brussels 1959, lives in Paris – installations, photography CLAUDE CLOSKY, b. Paris 1963, lives in Paris – multimedia

JURY ALFRED PACQUEMENT, Director of the Musée National d’Art Moderne, Centre Pompidou, chairman MARIA DE CORRAL (Spain), Director of the Venice Biennale GILLES FUCHS (France), President of ADIAF, art collector ANTON HERBERT (Belgium), art collector JACQUELINE MATISSE MONNIER (France), artist HANS ULRICH OBRIST (Switzerland), exhibition curator ALAIN-DOMINIQUE PERRIN (France), President of the Jeu de Paume, art collector

PUBLICATIONS ADIAF/PRIX MARCEL DUCHAMP 2005 Un-Deux ... Quatre EDITIONS, Format: 22 x 27 cm, 48 pp., Bilingual French/English

CLAUDE CLOSKY Collection Espace 315, Edited by Françoise Bertaux, Editions du Centre Pompidou, Format: 17 x 22 cm, 80 pp., Bilingual French/English Articles by: Jean-Pierre Bordaz, Marie Muracciole, François Piron, Katty Siegel and Paul Mattick

Pressetext

PRIX MARCEL DUCHAMP 2005 – Claude Closky – Manège
Kurator: Jean-Pierre Bordaz