ART CITIES:N.York-Michel Majerus
On 6/11/2002, Michel Majerus died in a plane crash at the age of 35 over Luxembourg, the city where he was born. Although his creative period didn’t last much more than a decade, Majerus produced an extremely impressive body of work which shows, in opposite directions, the way he moved constantly forward while letting the world move through him at the same time.
By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Matthew Marks Gallery Archive
Producing many different elements that can appear one after the other or randomly together in his paintings and installations, he represented a very wide course, quoting and mixing logos, texts, colours, advertising, games, as well as artists like Sigmar Polke, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Andy Warhol and many others. The exhibition “Michel Majerus. Aluminum Paintings” at Matthew Marks Gallery in New York features 7 works from the period 1996-2000, painted on aluminum panels, 125 x 250 cm each. Central to Majerus was his distinctive ability to elusively orchestrate a pre-existing stock of images that regularly bombard our senses and perceptions. He recognised the opportunities to place his subjective spin on the often homogenous motifs and stylistic elements that emerge from the mass-media. His works sidestep hastily reductive interpretations and adeptly define an individual relationship with the bewildering conglomeration of digital technologies and consumer choices present in global cultural media. Installed together for the first time in over 20 years are 5 paintings with Nintendo’s Mario character printed in the lower-right register. At the time they were made, Mario had recently been the subject of the first movie based on the video game “Super Mario Bros”. The other piece of digital technology often mentioned in discussions of Majerus’s work is the digital sampler. Throughout his career he appropriated not only popular imagery (logos, cartoons, event flyers) but also historical styles of abstract painting. Majerus repeatedly cited Andy Warhol as an inspiration, and nowhere is this influence more evident than in these 7 paintings. But Majerus’s devotional icons, silk-screened like Warhol’s on fields of bright color, were updates for the digital age. Two paintings in the exhibition feature computer-animated stars of the 1995 film “Toy Story”, while two others include a helix logo made of colored pixels, a new icon of the kind now familiar from computer screens and handheld devices.
Info: Matthew Marks Gallery, 523 West 24th Street, New York, Duration: 10/2-15/4/17, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:00-18:00, www.matthewmarks.com