CLAUDE CLOSKY
21st Century, Art in the First Decade
Queensland Art Gallery
18.12.2010 – 26.04.2011

“Claude Closky’s art practice draws on the flow of images, logos and advertising strategies that are the face of consumer capitalism in the twenty-first century. His work points to the way in which the sign and the product become equivalent in the hyper-reality of publicity and consumerism.

‘Hydrastar’ 1997–2008 uses the ‘meta’ language of advertising in which suggestive suffixes and prefixes create brand-driven neologisms and product descriptions that have meaning only within the vocabulary of marketing. This collage of possible product names evokes society’s desire for beauty, youth and exclusivity.

In his wallpaper work ‘Untitled (NASDAQ)’ 2003, Closky uses columns of stockmarket figures to form a literal backdrop to our lives. These lists of numbers in black and white belie the extraordinary interconnectedness and incomprehensible levels of complexity characteristic of the global economic system.

‘21st Century: Art in the First Decade’ is at the Gallery of Modern Art (GoMA), Brisbane, Queensland, Australia from 18 December 2010 – 26 April 2011 | Photography: Natasha Harth | © QAG|GoMA 2010

This major exhibition project will occupy the entire GoMA building and focus exclusively on works created and acquired between 2000 and 2010. It will draw on the Gallery’s extensive contemporary collections and also feature outstanding new commissions and a select group of loans from Australian and international lenders. The exhibition will be broad in its geographic and generational scope including over 200 works by more than 140 artists from over 40 countries.”