The latest edition of MASTERS highlights the iconic works of top artist and guest editor Joseph Klibansky. Joseph: "My art is a reflection on society. Certain things I highlight and blow up in the form of a monumental image. I put that back into society so that the beholders can have a moment of reflection. "Text: Bart - Jan Brouwer
Online editing: Noa Verseveldt
Image: studio Joseph Klibansky
"Birthday Suit" is another term for "standing in your nakedness. It is the suit you were wearing when you were born. This chimp is standing in his nakie, with a party hat on, a rolling tongue in his mouth and a bunch of roses in his hand. He takes a bit of a cocked pose, with his belly forward. This sculpture stands in front of the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, the tallest building in the world. For me, this work is about taking or not taking opportunities. That may be in love - having the flowers, being ready for the party, but failing to make the move. Do you wait and see or are you someone who goes for it? Do you remain very comfortable working for the same boss or do you take the step to go into business for yourself? But of course everyone is allowed to have their own interpretation. For example: even if you stand in your nakedness, however dastardly, stay true to yourself, to who you are, and have fun in life."
"I was traveling with my parents to visit a bronze foundry in Germany. In a roadside restaurant we were eating a kaiser roll with sausage, when an idea came to me. I grabbed pen and paper and sketched this gorilla. He reminds me a little of my father. He is on the one hand very supportive, but on the other hand also quite reserved. The gorilla has a party hat on and a horn in his mouth - symbolizing 'joining the parade' - but also raises an eyebrow, looks with a slanted eye. 'I said that,' you can expect when things go wrong. We put a lot of time and effort into getting the character of the piece right. We wanted a kind of Mona Lisa effect: that the eyes keep following you as you look at it from different angles. Normally you can create depth with color, but this image is all black. It took a lot of effort to really make it a character. I just really wanted to make this piece, but we didn't expect it to be such a success. All the images were sold, all the screen prints were sold, it became the cover of my book, the hero image of my show in Venice. This was really a big bang for us."
"This is the largest work I have ever made: 7.20 x 5.50 meters. It was a commission on the occasion of the 300th anniversary of ABN AMRO MeesPierson in 2020. It's a canvas canvas made up of lots of panels. We hung those and took pictures of them, to show that the painting was really made in that size. Then we cut the canvas into 42,000 squares. We sent all those fragments of the original painting to the clients of the celebrating private bank, including a video of the making of: the birth and destruction of the artwork. Each square is numbered. By entering the number on the website, you could see exactly where your piece of painting was in the whole."
"I had a large exhibition at Kunsthalle Guangzhou in China, in a space of about 1,200 square meters in total. In one 300-square-meter room, I had an entire wallpaper and floor laid in the same theme as my paintings, so that visitors stepped, as it were, ín my work. All the floors, all the walls: it was actually one big painting. And on top of that we hung on the wall my paintings, thought paintings. Bizarre!"
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