Claude Closky: Town And Country

Claude Closky: Town And Country at Mitterrand + Sanz Contemporary in Zurich. "...Town and Country is a collage series. Each of the photographs that have been cut out of magazines comprise at least one human figure and are accompanied by the artist’s hand-written commentary in the style of a title. This added commentary halts our gaze on those glossy images that we have become so used to seeing pass before our eyes at such speed. He makes them talk outside their commercial and reassuring discourse. The written text brilliantly ignores the 'message' instilled in the easily decodable 'visuals' and introduces an element of uncertainty into their reading.
All the texts in Town and Country speak about death as if it were the subject of the series. However, the work is more complex. Claude Closky never presents his audience with a 'picture' of reality; instead he is more interested in what his cultural background and his imagination urge him to impose on this reality. In other words: Closky focuses his work on those modalities of representation, which give reality its form. The verb 'to die' introduces a framework for each collage in the Town and Country series: to die in the street, on the beach, at a masked ball... Closky writes 'To die barefoot', or 'To die in the kitchen' as if wearing shoes or cooking could kill. Nothing can prevent us from losing our lives on the road, or lying on the grass, or barefoot, or on horseback. But these circumstances are not enough to die from. They are indifferent to the event, unique and unrepresentable, of dying."