Communication Department PRESS PACK PRIX MARCELDUCHAMP 2005 CLAUDE CLOSKY: «MANÈGE» 17 MAY - 31 JULY 2006 PRIX MARCEL DUCHAMP 2005 CLAUDE CLOSKY : «MANÈGE» 17 MAY - 31 JULY 2006 ESPACE 315, LEVEL 1 Direction de la communication CONTENTS 75191 Paris Cedex 04 director Roya Nasser 1. PRESENTATION OF THE ARTIST’S PROJECT page 3 press offficer Dorothée Mireux 2. PLAN OF THE EXHIBITION page 6 telephone 00 33 (0)1 44 78 46 60 fax 3. CATALOGUES page 7 00 33 (0)1 44 78 13 02 e-mail [email protected] 4. BIOGRAPHY page 9 Adiaf www.adiaf.com 5. VISUALS AVAILABLE FOR PRESS USE page 10 press officer Caroline Crabbe telephone 6. THE MARCEL DUCHAMP PRIZE page 11 00 33 (0) 6 10 19 36 31 e-mail [email protected] curator Jean-Pierre Bordaz, Musée national d’art moderne, service des collections contemporaines page 3 Claude Closky is laureate of the fifth edition of the Marcel Duchamp Prize in the wake of Thomas Hirschhorn, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Mathieu Mercier and Carole Benzaken. The Centre Pompidou has commissioned him to create a new work, which will be on show between 17 May and 31 July in the Espace 315. Claude Closky was awarded the prize by the jury for “showing great artistic maturity in his implementation of this universal language”. Very present on the Parisian scene where he is represented by the Galerie Laurent Godin, he has participated in more than 200 international exhibitions and his work is exhibited in Germany, Switzerland, Italy, the States and Japan. The artist is not unknown at the Centre Pompidou as it is he who designed the entrance ticket as well as the wallpaper in the offices. page 4 1. PRESENTATION OF THE ARTIST’S PROJECT Claude Closky created Manège specifically for this exhibition in Espace 315. The work is interpreted below by Marie Muracciole, art critic and author of an article in the exhibition catalogue (information below in 3. CATALOGUES). MANÈGE Marie Muracciole, January 2006 (…) Time is what happens, and even what makes it all happen. Henri Bergson. In the empty, rectangular Espace 315 are sixteen flat screens placed at eye level at regular intervals, each displaying the monochrome blue colour signifying a lack of signal. On each of these screens in turn appears a graphic, or photographic moving image. There are, in fact, thousands of images, taken from the internet which, in the space of 4 to 20 seconds, illustrate the unfolding of an action, a movement or the conclusion of a sequence of actions. The movements are decomposed into freeze frames which represent certain stages of an abstract duration. The image definition is poor; the subject and treatment of the image is unappealing and the way in which they follow on from each other is random. Each image sequence is accompanied by a jingle, an instrumental sound made up of a single measure of ordinary contemporary entertainment, looped. Considerable in number but too brief to be recognizable they merely leave an air of familiarity. The combination of sound and image is arbitrary, but always synchronised. The images are both temporally connected (by following directly on from each other) and spatially distinct (by confining themselves to a screen each time they appear). Space separates them and time links them together. Space really does separate them as the screens are placed far apart. Occupied ground is kept strictly to a minimum, with only one screen working at a time. Only the flow of the represented movements, and the continuousness of the motions in the images and the progression from one screen to the next maintains the sporadic visibility of Manège. The leap from screen to screen takes place clockwise, giving an impression of changing gear. It is progress without conclusion as each time the action is completed from beginning to end, it moves on to the next in synchronisation with the music, and – round it goes. There is no variation. Chance may offer a repeat of the sequences, but they seem to go on interminably, never reaching the indiscernible limits. This circular movement from one screen to the next gives no feeling of spilling out into another space; we are not made aware of the gap between the screens because the clean cut between the images creates a constant movement: from beginning to end the images appear and disappear without a break. By the time a new sequence begins, the preceding one has ended. The viewers follow the movement from screen to screen with their eyes, and their feet automatically follow; otherwise they stay where they are and turn on the spot. They are guided just as much by the rhythm of the soundtrack emitting from each active screen. The sound surrounds and fills the space, parodying the surround sound of cinema. It circulates around the room signalling the sporadic changes of the screens from ‘on’ to ‘off’. The screens are flat: they look more like pictures on a wall than video monitors; they are not even windows, far from it, nor reflective surfaces. They transmit what they receive. They are the extreme point, the final destination of images broadcast from a digital news channel providing them with ready-made elements; these screens are vulgar and commercial, even though they are a familiar sight nowadays on museum walls. They are also passive. They offer the warmth of the active image when ‘on’ and the cold weightlessness of the screen when ‘off’ – the blue of the absence of the video signal is similar to a blue incrustation, that happens to resemble the IKB chosen by Klein to describe the void, or the colour of a bright blue sky. Manège links progress (sequences of images and that clockwork movement that carries them along), with repetition (the different rhythms of the jingles resounding in the space). The distribution of movement in each graphic or photographic animation scans the passage of “solid” (as in homogenous), one dimensional time. Manège is concerned with that time, in the same way that it is concerned with not filling the space, illustrated by the sending of the sequences into orbit and the fifteen screens that remain inert for every one that comes to life. The artist’s principal intervention is not in the quantity of constructed sequences, but in the minimised timing of their appearance. page 5 Manège makes heads spin, and transforms the picture rails into a gyratory flashing giving a guided vision of the exhibition like working out. As if in a moving train, we become the axis of a constant displacement. Where are we heading? These few snippets of soundtrack and visuals are shifted and reassembled without any aesthetic or profound aim; mixing them is not intended to offer them redemption through art. Their passage in this vast space cuts them off from their use and significance; but Closky does not give them meaning, nor does he reveal them for our discernment: his aim is not transfiguration. Manège is a “reprise” or rerun of visual and sound compositions. In French, “reprise” in equestrian terms also refers to the moment of dressage and perfectionism, where all is done in step, the controlling of movements within the manege. Rerun here does not signify repeat. Manège takes elements, the profusion and banality of which are pledged to our indifference, and singles them out. They are isolated and enlarged in a setting giving them a new lease of life and a change of tempo. This adjustment speaks about the way in which these images and sounds are presented in the installation and not about the adjustments of the images and sounds themselves. Il relates to certain drawings in which he checks off all the squares in an exercise book, counts the hours of a day, the days in a life, etc. Closky turns wasted time into a frenetic activity, clocked by him: “Some of my works are the subject of the time it took to make them.” In Manège the time spent is automated and constant, it is no longer the result of a work as its duration shows neither the process nor the trace. Manège turns its reruns into the object and medium of a processing of time and its issues, starting with the time passed during the exhibition. The installation brings about the rhythm and adjustment of intensity which define one form of time: time to be conquered, over which it would be good to have control, and which Manège seems to generate without interruption. Taking, making, passing and wasting time, the mechanics of the (full) use of time are displayed and dissipated here. The question is there on the screens and in the voids between, whether we should spend so much time in watching it go by. Does that alter its essence? Because if, for most of the time, it is time that passes, or makes everything pass (or nearly everything), time is (also) what happens, and even what makes it all happen. page 6 2. PLAN OF THE EXHIBITION Claude Closky, Manège, 2005-2006 installation video, PC, répartiteur audio video, 16 moniteurs stéréo LCD 76 cm page 7 Editions du Centre Pompidou 3. CATALOGUES Attachée de presse Evelyne Poret téléphone ADIAF/PRIX MARCEL DUCHAMP 2005 00 33 (0)1 44 78 15 98 Un-Deux ... Quatre EDITIONS e-mail Format: 22 x 27 cm, 48 pages, [email protected] Bilingual version: French/English Price: 20 euros As emphasized by Alfred Pacquement in his preface to the Prix Marcel Duchamp 2005 catalogue: “Claude Closky is an extremely inventive artist who uses all sorts of different mediums with which to express himself: internet sites, image projection, books, paintings, drawings, collages, wallpapers, electronic signboards, etc.