Michel Majerus

Template:Short description Template:Use dmy datesTemplate:Distinguish Template:Infobox artist Michel Majerus (9 June 1967 – 6 November 2002) was a Luxembourgish artist who combined painting with digital media in his work.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> He lived and worked in Berlin until his untimely death in a plane crash on November 2002.<ref>Project Space: Michel Majerus, January 24 – April 18, 2004 Tate Liverpool.</ref>

Early life and education

Majerus was born in Esch-sur-Alzette, Luxembourg, in 1967. In 1986, Majerus began to study at the State Academy of Fine Arts Stuttgart, graduating in 1992.<ref>[1] Was Michel Majerus the Most Important Artist of His Generation? A Global Reappraisal of the Painter Has Now Reached U.S. Shores</ref>

Art

File:What looks good today may not look good tomorrow, 2000, Michel Majerus at MoMA 2022.jpg

Majerus's painting What Looks Good Today May Not Look Good Tomorrow (2000) at the Museum of Modern Art in 2022

In 1992, together with his fellow students from Stuttgart Nader (Ahriman), Stephan Jung, Susa Reinhardt and Wawa (Wawrzyniec) Tokarski, Majerus co-founded the artist group 3K-NH. They used the initials of their nicknames to form a cryptic name. 3K-NH held exhibitions both in Stuttgart and Berlin.<ref>Michel Majerus: Early Works, 22 October 22 – 15 January 23 KW Institute for Contemporary Art.</ref> In 1993, Majerus and Jung moved to Berlin.<ref>Michel Majerus: Early Works, 22 October 22 – 15 January 23 KW Institute for Contemporary Art.</ref>

Painting was Majerus's preferred medium of expression, but his creative horizon extended to many aspects of popular culture, from computer games, digital art, film, television, and pop music to trademarks and corporate logos and famous artists.<ref>Project Space: Michel Majerus, January 24 – April 18, 2004 Tate Liverpool.</ref> Stylistic quotations of his paintings include aspects of works by Andy Warhol, Willem de Kooning and Jean-Michel Basquiat,<ref>Dorothy Spears (October 25, 2013), Galleries as the Art World’s Leading Indicators New York Times.</ref> video games and other pop-culture sources.<ref>Michel Majerus, February 8 - April 19, 2014 Matthew Marks Gallery, New York.</ref> In 1996, Majerus began his MoM Block series, comprising more than 170 canvases. MoM is an abbreviation of Modehaus Mitte, a former fashion factory in East Berlin, in which Majerus had his studio for a while.<ref>[Michel Majerus, MoM Block nr. 27, 1998] Städel.</ref>

Majerus did not limit himself to two-dimensional surfaces, but painted installations which surround the viewer.<ref>Michel Majerus: "what looks good today may not look good tomorrow", June 24 - October 16, 2005 Template:Webarchive Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam.</ref> For a 1994 show at his Berlin gallery Neugerriemschneider, he asked that a road be paved inside the modest exhibition space.<ref>Andrew Russeth (30 November 2022), Michel Majerus Saw the Future — 20 Years Ago New York Times.</ref> In 1999, at the invitation of curator Harald Szeemann, he painted the façade of the international pavilion in the Giardini of the Venice Biennale.<ref>Michel Majerus: Early Works, 22 October 22 – 15 January 23 KW Institute for Contemporary Art.</ref> For his largest work, If You Are Dead, So It Is (2000), Majerus covered the interior surface of a Template:Convert<ref>Michel Majerus Matthew Marks Gallery.</ref> skateboarders' half-pipe.<ref>Michel Majerus, May 31 - September 23, 2012 Centre d'arts plastiques contemporains de Bordeaux.</ref>

After moving to Los Angeles in 2000 through the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), Majerus began work on a series of thirty large-format paintings incorporating digital media and animated videos. Completed in Berlin the following year, the series eventually comprised over thirty works.<ref>Project Space: Michel Majerus, January 24 – April 18, 2004 Tate Liverpool.</ref> Nine of these works would eventually become the Pop Reloaded exhibition in Los Angeles. Pop Reloaded emphasized the visual confusion of the urban landscapes and the scale of freeway billboards and office towers. It drew on works by Cy Twombly, Mark Rothko and Gerhard Richter. The paintings were accompanied by a video of a constantly changing image of Majerus's signature, to illustrate the idea of celebrity as a constantly changing concept.<ref>Project Space: Michel Majerus, January 24 – April 18, 2004 Tate Liverpool.</ref>

In 2002, shortly after his return to Berlin from Los Angeles, Majerus installed a life-size photograph of a Brutalist social housing block directly in front of the East side of Brandenburg Gate;<ref>Holland Cotter (3 April 2014), Where Blue-Chip Brands Meet Brassy Outliers New York Times.</ref> the other side was taken over by a work of Thomas Bayrle.<ref>Provokation: Sozialpalast statt Brandenburger Tor Berliner Morgenpost, 07 September 2002.</ref> Majerus was working on an exhibition entitled "Project Space" for Tate Liverpool when he died.<ref>Project Space: Michel Majerus, January 24 – April 18, 2004 Tate Liverpool.</ref>

Exhibitions

Majerus's artwork first came to international attention in 1996 with an exhibition at the Kunsthalle in Stuttgart, and then with subsequent exhibitions in Munster and Dundee (Colour Me Blind! – Painting in the Age of Computer Games and Comics, 2000).<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref> In 1996 the Kunsthalle Basel organized a mid-career museum retrospective.<ref>Michel Majerus, February 8 - April 19, 2014 Matthew Marks Gallery, New York.</ref>

In 1998, Majerus was invited to participate in Manifesta 2.<ref>artists Manifesta Biennale</ref> He participated in the Venice Biennale in 1999, where he covered the facade of the main Italian Pavilion with a mural he designed.<ref>Michel Majerus, February 8 - April 19, 2014 Matthew Marks Gallery, New York.</ref>

Since his death in 2002, several museums have organized exhibitions of Majerus’s work, including the Hamburger Bahnhof (2003), the Tate Liverpool (2004), the Kunsthaus Graz (2005), and the Kunstmuseum Stuttgart (2011).<ref>Michel Majerus, February 8 - April 19, 2014 Matthew Marks Gallery, New York.</ref> A posthumous exhibition of his works was featured at the Kunstmuseum of Wolfsburg (Germany) in 2003. Entitled Painting Pictures, the exhibition was a celebration of Majerus's genre and was dedicated to his memory. Other painters represented in Painting Pictures included Takashi Murakami, Sarah Morris, Franz Ackermann, Matthew Ritchie, Torben Giehler and Erik Parker. Beginning in 2005, approximately two hundred of Majerus's works have been displayed as the European Retrospective travelling exhibition. The exhibition was a collaboration between the Majerus family and the Galerie Neugerriemschneider, Berlin. It included works usually displayed at the Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin, the Universalmuseum Joanneum, Graz and from private collections throughout the world (including Argentina, Austria, Belgium, Spain, Germany, Great-Britain, Greece, Italy, Luxembourg, Mexico, Portugal, USA).Template:Citation needed

In 2018, the Institute of Contemporary Art Boston included a painting by Majerus in a survey of art after the internet, placing it within the context of works by Jon Rafman, Cao Fei, Avery Singer, and others.<ref>Nadja Sayej (2 February 2018), Creativity in the digital age: how has the internet affected the art world? The Guardian.</ref><ref>Alex Greenberger (28 November 2022), 20 Years Ago, Michel Majerus Predicted Where Painting Would Be Today. He Was Right. ARTnews.</ref> His first museum survey in the United States opened at the ICA Miami in 2022.<ref>Andrew Russeth (30 November 2022), Michel Majerus Saw the Future — 20 Years Ago New York Times.</ref> Opening twenty years after the death was the exhibition series called Michel Majerus 2022 which was presented at the KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Neuer Berliner Kunstverein and Kunstverein in Hamburg.<ref>Michel Majerus: Early Works, 22 October 22 – 15 January 23 KW Institute for Contemporary Art.</ref>

Death

In November 2002, Majerus was killed aboard Luxair Flight 9642 while travelling from Berlin to Luxembourg.<ref>Morrison, Donald A Coming-Out Party. TIME. Wednesday 28 February 2007. Retrieved on 1 November 2009.</ref>

Influence

In 2013, artist Thomas Bayrle played with elements from two of Majerus's paintings to create a silk-screened wallpaper titled Majerus (Smudge Tool/XXX) I.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> In 2020, Takashi Murakami made paintings that borrow from some of Majerus's imagery.<ref>Andrew Russeth (30 November 2022), Michel Majerus Saw the Future — 20 Years Ago New York Times.</ref>

In 2024, the Michel Majerus Estate presented a project called Let's Play Majerus G3 based on Majerus's Power Macintosh G3 computer from his archive. It was organized by artist Cory Arcangel in cooperation with the digital art organization Rhizome.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Further reading

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External links

• [2] The Michel Majerus Estate
• Michel Majerus at Mudam