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| Curator | Bettina Steinbrügge, assistée par Clémentine Proby |
| Miniguides | Téléchargez le livret de l'exposition et apprenez-en plus sur Michel Majerus |
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| Media partner | Luxemburger Wort |
| Spatial Design by | Studio Miessen |
| Credits | The exhibition is the last chapter of a programme dedicated to the work of Michel Majerus which begins in November 2022 with the symposium what looks good today may not look good tomorrow: The Legacy of Michel Majerus, whose interventions will result in a publication, published by Sternberg Press. |
| Documents |
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| What looks good today may not look good tomorrow: The Legacy of Michel Majerus |
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Michel Majerus, ‘SINNMASCHINE’, 1997. Collection Mudam Luxembourg. Acquisition 2023 – avec le soutien des membres du Cercle des collectionneurs du Mudam Luxembourg. Vue de l’exposition ‘Michel Majerus: SINNMASCHINE’, Mudam Luxembourg, 31.03 – 10.10.2023. Photo : Mareike Tocha
© Mudam Luxembourg © Michel Majerus Estate, 2024
SINNMASCHINE
Michel Majerus
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Over the span of a short yet exceptionally prolific career, Michel Majerus (b. 1967, Esch- sur-Alzette - d. 2002, Niederanven) captured the spirit of his time – decades marked by the expansion of globalised consumer culture and digital technology. His large-scale paintings and installations are characterised by the visual sampling and collaging of an eclectic repertoire of imagery and text. Borrowing freely from art history, video games, commercials or electronic music, his work resonates with the frenzy of imagery and information that has been pervading our contemporary society through the omnipresence of internet. In his work, Majerus transgressed the well-worn rules of painting and created unmistakable interpretations of the pop culture of the 1990s and early 2000s that continue to be of unfailing relevance today.
Majerus’s painting installations typically examined the growing role of the digital, allowing visitors to walk through and experience emerging visual cultures in an immersive way. SINNMASCHINE [Sense Machine] (1997), featured as part of the exhibition in the Grand Hall of Mudam, is one of those. Referencing The Man-Machine, the 1978 album of German electronic-music band Kraftwerk, its industrial metal floor recalls a dancefloor on which visitors’ steps resonate. Playfully blending the vocabularies of entertainment, advertisement and the news, the artwork portrays the homogenisation of taste in a globalised capitalist economy. Majerus used the iconographic repertoire of the Internet at a time when the information age was still in its infancy.
The exhibition features several paintings by Majerus, in addition to SINNMASCHINE. Rather than a retrospective look, the exhibition at Mudam specifically points to Majerus’s working methods by displaying archival material never shown outside of the Michel Majerus Estate. His notebooks, his collection of books and magazines, and as well as some recorded VHS offer a glimpse of the fascinating way Majerus made sense of the world he lived in – casting these objects as his own ‘sense machine’. A discerning observer of his environment – the scene of a newly developing global and digital visual language – he recorded his thoughts and impressions through drawings and writing in expansive notebooks. His library and the recorded VHS displayed in the exhibition introduce us to the universe of Michel Majerus, providing an understanding of the multiple interests and inspirations that have informed some of his most iconic artworks, such as SINNMASCHINE.
Biographie
Michel Majerus (1967, Esch-sur-Alzette - 2002, Niederanven) a étudié à l’Académie nationale des beaux-arts de Stuttgart avant de s’installer à Berlin où, hormis un séjour d’un an à Los Angeles, il a vécu et travaillé jusqu’à sa mort prématurée, en 2002. Son travail sera présenté dans dans des expositions rétrospectives à KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin, au Kunstverein de Hambourg, et au Neuer Berliner Kunstverein, parmi treize autres musées incluant des œuvres de Majerus issues de leurs collections, dans le cadre de Michel Majerus 2022, une série d’expositions à travers l’Allemagne. Il a auparavant notamment été présenté dans des expositions individuelles au Kunstmuseum Stuttgart (2011), au Mudam, Luxembourg (2006), au Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (2005), à la Kunsthaus Graz (2005), au Deichtorhallen Hamburg (2005), à la Tate Liverpool (2004), à la Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin (2003), et à la Kunsthalle Basel (1996).
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