Joseph Klibansky

From his towering bronze sculptures to his surrealist pastel paintings, the Contemporary artist Joseph Klibansky is still relatively young, yet he is already a serious player in the art world. Exploring matters related to perception that have fascinated philosophers and art historians for centuries, his works reveal how bleak and dystopian an image can be that initially appears happy and utopian.

Best known for his monumental sculptures - like The Thinker, installed in 2023 on the Rembrandtplein in Amsterdam and a tribute to the artist Rembrandt van Rijn - the artist’s practice is rooted in technological advancements. Using the limitless potential of digitally enhanced art, Klibansky constructs his complex sculptural compositions and creates his multi-layered mixed-media paintings, collages and prints.

Born in 1984 in South Africa, Klibanksy currently lives and works in Amsterdam. In 2008, he began working on his digital paintings, detailing dystopian metropolises where the natural and man-made collide. In Garden of Evolution, from the ‘New Urban Wonderland’ series, painted in 2012, he depicts a crumbling Times Square surrounded by colourful butterflies - a symbol of new beginnings in an unknown world.