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17/11/2005

Michel Majerus

Kestnergesellschaft, Hannover

What looks good today may not look good tomorrow

Michel Majerus (1967-2002) counts as a key figure in a new and internationally acclaimed generation of young, contemporary painters. His large-scale pictures and installations give multi-layered and extremely vital treatment to the theme of the myriad combinations inherent to a fast-paced era. In November 2002 the artist (born in Esch/Luxemburg) died in a plane crash at the age of only thirty-five. The kestnergesellschaft and the Deichtorhallen are now simultaneously devoting two exhibitions in Hannover and Hamburg to the artist.

Majerus’ work presents one significant response of contemporary painting with regard to a reality in which the visual aspect is continuously increasing in importance and the individual image loses its status more and more. His pictures and installations register the mounting acceleration of visual codes and experiential worlds. “What looks good today may not look good tomorrow” – this is the title of a central work. In the logic and aesthetic of sampling, Majerus combines familiar images from the recent history of art by Wilhelm de Kooning, Frank Stella, Jean-Michel Basquiat or Andy Warhol with insignia of techno and fragments from advertising as well as from the culture of computer games and comic books. Thus his works draw their dynamism from a field of energy extending between the poles of an iconoclastic irony and of an unequivocal trust in the power of images, an attitude which manifested itself in an extremely high productivity – there exist over 1,500 works.

The exhibition in the kestnergesellschaft focuses particularly on the overflowing iconography of Majerus’ paintings. Alongside the presentation of central works, there will be exhibited for the first time a representative selection of the 60 x 60 cm works on canvas which were generated in loose succession and in large number (1,400 works) and which may be read as a sort of visual index for the entire oeuvre.

In the Hamburger Deichtorhallen there will be shown for the first time almost all the giant formats which measure up to ten meters in height and width, and in which this visual index finds a highly condensed mode of expression. The pictures, which are mostly composites of several canvasses, transport the viewer by means of their cinemascope-like formats into a universe consisting of utterly diverse quotations and fragments of contemporary reality, from Mickey Mouse by way of designer objects right through to Nike gym shoes.

Eighteen of these gigantic pictures are combined into a spectacularly theatrical painterly ensemble. The spatial experience inherent to these large formats is intensified by the introductory installation entitled “The Space is where you’ll find it.” Via this work the visitor, as if passing through an experiential space consisting of cubes and contemporary visual codes, subsequently reaches the central exhibition hall, in which the pictures stand freely.

In addition, upon the walls of the lateral rooms are hung works whose theme is the language of a world deeply marked by the media and advertising, a preoccupation which alongside the visual codes represents the second essential element in Majerus’ oeuvre.

The exhibitions in Hamburg and Hannover are part of an extensive international Michel Majerus retrospective, in which are also participating – each with a different emphasis – the Kunsthaus Graz, the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam and the Musée d’Art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean in Luxemburg. Accompanying the exhibitions, a common catalogue will be published by these institutions.

Opening: November 18

kestnergesellschaft
Goseriede 11 - Hannover

stampa

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