Michel
Majerus
31.05 / 23.09.2012
CAPC
d'art contemporain
contemporain
musée d’art
de Bordeaux
For its main summer show, the CAPC programs the
first Michel Majerus retrospective in France. Only
french museum detaining a monumental work of the
Luxemburg born artist in its collection, the CAPC
will present a consequent selection of installations
and paintings in its nave, of which the gigantic and
gliding skateboard ramp if you are dead, so it is.
“I’m fascinated by the idea of doing something without
being sure of what it will become, and without anyone else
being sure what it will become. I will never know, and no one
else will know: that is how I think of art”.
Michel Majerus
The brief span of Michel Majerus’ career
coincides with two major revolutions, one
technological, the other political. The artist’s
work reached its creative peak and made its
mark on the international art scene in 1996,
when the Internet was emerging as a new
phenomenon. His death in a tragic plane crash
occurred one year after the political turmoil
caused by the 9/11 attacks in 2001.
In the space of six years, these two revolutions
profoundly transformed the socio-cultural and
economic parameters of our civilization, giving
birth to a new era we commonly refer to as
“globalization”.
It brought with it mobility, polycentrism,
information streams, new networks, social
diversity, and hybridization. Nothing is
“remote” or “peripheral” any more, power
hubs no longer have physical locations,
and social time patterns have been
desynchronized. In the space of a few years,
Michel Majerus sensed and embraced these
new parameters and used them to develop
new aesthetic paradigms: painting as a space
for navigation and circulation, the canvas’s
surface used like a screen, the boundless
availability of images, the simultaneity
and heterogeneity of signs and forms, the
importance of communication technology in
human interaction, and so on.
The openness and permeability of
Majerus’work reflects its genuine kinship
with Pop Art. Its contemporary thrust owes
much to the artist’s relentless concern with
the question of style, rooted in his awareness
of living in an entirely ‘designed’ world
in which all entities, ideas, and physical
manifestations are produced via standardized
communication tools whose visual identity is
tightly controlled. Majerus decided to refrain
from making choices (of style), remaining
faithful to this fundamental, difficult and often
misunderstood relativism until the end, as
shown in the darker, more anxious paintings
he made in 2002, shortly before his death.
This is the first solo exhibition of Michel
Majerus’ work in France. Produced in
collaboration with the Kunstmuseum in
Stuttgart, this retrospective will gather 35
works produced by the artist between 1996
and 2002, as well as two major installations:
- The monumental work Reminder (1998),
which was added to our collection in 2007
(on deposit from the Centre national des arts
plastiques). It is the first time since its creation
in 1998 for Manifesta in Luxemburg that this
amazing work can be shown again, thanks to
the huge size of the main hall of the CAPC.
- With if you are dead, so it is (2000)
Majerus has covered the interior surface
of a skateboarders’ half-pipe. It will be
reconstructed running the length of the 164foot nave of the CAPC. Visitors will be able to
glide through on foot or on roller blades…
This show reflects the museum’s determination
to present the work of a generation of artists,
curators and critics who have developed new
idioms and display methods that echo the
changing cultural, social, and economic context
of art.
Curator
Charlotte Laubard
Catalog Michel Majerus
Texts by Nicolas Bourriaud, Heike-Karin
Föll, Ulrike Groos, Joseph Kosuth, Charlotte
Laubard, Stephan Schmidt-Wulffen
Eds. DISTANZ, Berlin ; Kunstmuseum,
Stuttgart ; CAPC musée d’art contemporain,
Bordeaux, 2011
French-English, 224 pages, color illustrations,
23,5 x 28,5 cm
ISBN: 978-3-942405-56-0
Price: 44 ¤
The exhibition Michel Michel is organized
in collaboration with the Kunstmuseum,
Stuttgart
Couverture
Michel Majerus, Pathfinder, 2002. Impression numérique sur vinyl,
380 x 290 x 3,5 cm © michel majerus estate.
Courtesy neugerriemschneider, Berlin
Michel Majerus : Screenshots
Nicolas Bourriaud
When discussing Frank Stella’s painting,
Robert Rosenblum writes that it covers nearly
all essential painterly problems of its time.1
The same could also be said, however, of
the compressed, synthetic work of Michel
Majerus—in spite of an extremely short career
that came to an abrupt end in a plane crash
in fall 2002, when he was merely thirty-four
years old. It was an ironic twist of fate that the
accident occurred in the country of his birth;
no stranger to wanderlust, Majerus, a man who
would introduce himself as a “Berlin artist”
and had just returned from a several-month
stay in the USA, would have been amused by
this symbolic act of coming full circle. There
is a bitter irony in the fact that his birth and
his death occurred in this tiny country, which
he always wanted to leave behind. One can
spend a lot of time speculating on how his
work would have shaped out if he had been
granted more time than just those few short
years. Like Yves Klein, Pino Pascali, Blinky
Palermo, and Jean-Michel Basquiat before
him, Majerus’s work has gone down in art
history as one of those important oeuvres
that was cruelly cut short. Which path would
Majerus have embarked on? Perhaps his style
would have become more somber, become
more “Kippenbergerian,” as the large lyrical
paintings that were found in his studio
immediately after his death would suggest.
Or perhaps—as is my personal belief—he
would have evolved a new synthesis from the
diverse pictorial building sites of his mind.
Majerus was the kind of artist who did not
allow himself to be squeezed into a painterly
formula. When I first met him in Paris in 1993,
he had nothing more to show than a thick
wad of small drawings, all inspired by the
pop culture of the time, mostly by animation
films. Their gentle irony was akin to that of
such artists as Rita Ackermann and Jean-Luc
Blanc, who were also working at the time on a
sensitive reappropriation of the dream factory,
executed by hand.
I only encountered Majerus’s works again in
1998, during Manifesta 2, which was then held
in Luxembourg. His progression was evident
and I was astounded by the large scale of his
works and the aggressive, Pop-influenced
colors. It all seemed far removed from the
timid drawings created immediately after
his studies at the Kunstakademie Stuttgart.
With astonishing audacity, he now made the
exhibition space entirely his own. From 1996
to 1999, Michel Majerus designed his first
major shows, starting with the Kunsthalle
Stuttgart up to the monumental Wall Drawing,
commissioned by Harald Szeemann for the
facade of the international pavilion at the
Biennale di Venezia. Shortly before this first
high point in his career, I had invited him
to participate in my exhibition Le Capital:
tableaux, diagrammes et bureaux d’études
at the Centre d’art contemporain in Sète.2
This show was mainly concerned with the
question of how capital flows had become
a main topic in contemporary art, and how
artists were having recourse to a language of
abstraction, statistical tools, and diagrams to
outline what had since become an abstract
reality for them. Majerus turned a huge stretch
of wall in the first room into an assemblage,
painted several elements in the gallery itself
and brought others with him from his studio,
including parts from earlier installations.
Architectural in nature, this piece, containing
colossal blow-ups (Yet sometimes what is
read successfully stops us with its meaning,
unveiled at Manifesta), monochrome panels,
and signs that had been painted over, clearly
brought to light his method of composition: in
all his work form and color were subjected to
a global image of contemporary life, informed
by a Pop—which is to say ambiguous—view
of the two-fold dominance of the computer
screen and commercial capitalism. This
fundamental ambivalence in Majerus’s painting
was based on his ability to marvel at the
signs of commercial rhetoric and the visual
flotsam and jetsam of the packaging industry,
counterbalanced by his belief in the power
of art and its ability to open the public’s eyes
to the toxic environment in which we find
ourselves. Romanticism and irony feed off
each other and lead to a whole new synthesis:
Majerus’s art flits between the causticity of a
Kippenberger, the iconic potential of Pop Art,
and the existential undertaking of a Basquiat,
never actually settling on one. He manages
to suspend all these heterogeneous elements
in a kind of precarious balance to reveal to us
the various facets of the world of capitalism,
from visual aggression to popular lyricism, via
alienation and rage.
Collage and Postproduction
Of all painters, Michel Majerus undoubtedly
embodies most clearly the methods of
production that I attempted to outline and
analyze in my essay Postproduction.3 The
casual manner in which he manipulated the
signs of postindustrial culture, the diversity
of his techniques, as well as his disdain for
any subject that had not yet featured online,
made his work a veritable manifesto for a
generation of artists that did not even view
painting as its preferred medium. Just as I did
a few years ago in Esthétique relationnelle,
I shall endeavor here to explore the forms
of knowledge particular to the age of
connectivity. The central question here is:
how does the cultural chaos wrought by the
Internet generate new modes of production
and, more importantly, new artistic stances in
the face of our changing environment? The
term “postproduction” is of course drawn
from the audiovisual domain and applies to all
aspects in the treatment of already recorded
material: montage, inserts from other visual
and audio sources, subtitles, voice-overs,
special effects … Since these activities are
seen as entirely connected with services and
recycling, postproduction is clearly anchored
in the tertiary sector and its mindset. By
reworking forms already created by others
and freely available cultural products, art
attuned itself to the global culture of the
information age. It is distinguished both by
the excessive augmentation of cultural signs
and the radical inclusion of forms ignored or
shunned up until then.
At first glance, Majerus’s paintings only
contain images and forms that one has seen
somewhere else and that have long been
common property, either borrowed from
consumer culture or from existing artworks.
More to the point, however, his brand of
painting strives to abolish the difference
between subject and form. By blending
painterly techniques with packaging materials,
Majerus conceived his exhibitions as shop
windows, as advertising spaces, which he then
structured as commercial displays according
to the rules of product placement. This
fascination for the shopping mall aesthetic
and attachment to Pop’s visual matrix are
typical for Majerus’s works of the nineties. As
a reaction to the American Simulationist art of
the preceding decade, young artists were now
more likely to be inspired by the formal model
of the flea market. From Thomas Hirschhorn
to Rirkrit Tiravanija and Jason Rhoades, the
exhibition in Sète formed a complex visual
circuit and was founded on such themes
as the availability of formal elements that
displayed a taste for the short-lived. From
a painterly perspective, it revolved around
the demand, dominant in the late twentieth
century, for a historicizing or sentimental form
of painting, from John Currin’s mischievous
portraits up to Karen Kilimnik’s or Elizabeth
Peyton’s assessment of visual junk. Formal
equivalents to Majerus’s universe can be
found in the double nostalgia that marked the
works of the Young British Artists, the years of
Koons, and Pop Art. But even the impact and
immediacy of the visual approach of a Damien
Hirst [or Angus Fairhurst] possess neither
the bite nor the critical potential of Majerus’s
paintings. One is more likely to find a profound
reflection on the digitalization of painting
in the work of Albert Oehlen, who one can
truly see as Majerus’s equivalent in terms of
approach. Among his own generation, his
direct peers were Bruno Peinado in France,
who drew on a perceived “creolization” of
culture to fuse commercial graphic art with
fine art, Franz Ackermann in Germany, who
indexes the contemporary landscape with
Google Earth and GPS, and Kelley Walker in
the USA, who couples the pictorial space with
digital circuitry.
When Majerus lived in Berlin in the second
half of the nineties, he had direct contact
with other artists of his generation, who were
extremely politically active and very involved
in techno and dj culture and were unabashed
in their manipulation of the language of
advertising and corporate culture. One of
them, the video artist Daniel Pflumm, started
to rework brand names like AT&T and Sony
into a kind of abstract “anti-ad” using selfcomposed, minimalist, electronic music.
Svetlana Heger and Plamen Dejanov are also
two figures, who in 1999, shortly prior to their
separation, dedicated themselves entirely to
the company BMW and featured the products
of this particular brand in all their exhibitions.
In the late nineties, Berlin was a bastion of
capitalist hardcore realism, fuelled by the
dramatic urban transformation process that
saw the city mutate into the capital of a united
Germany. Majerus was strongly influenced
by this cultural atmosphere. One of the most
essential principles of techno culture was the
abolition of the traditional separation between
production and consumption, creation and
copy. A dj’s raw material comprises audio
products that are already in circulation on
the cultural market, in effect things that have
been designed by others. Due to the nature of
the details used and his painterly techniques,
Majerus was one of the artists of his day
who came closest to being a kind of dj: by
changing preexisting material through diverse
effects of color and form, he created visual
loops. Most importantly though, he both saved
his images and worked on the composition
of his paintings on the computer. This fact is
of great significance, for the postproduction
artists who emerged in the nineties and twothousands differentiate themselves from
postmodernism, and in particular from its
proclivity for citation, precisely through the
fact that they integrate the functions available
in the digital universe in their conceptions.
Benjamin Buchloh was scathing in his
assessment of the postmodern painting of
the eighties, stating: “Style thus becomes the
ideological equivalent to merchandise: its
universal interchangeability, its free availability
denote a historical moment of closure and
stagnation. If there remains no other option
for the aesthetic discourse other than
maintaining its own system of distribution
and circulation of its marketable forms, then
it should hardly come as surprise that all
‘boldness has become mere convention,’
with paintings gradually resembling shop
windows, decorated with fragments of
historical references.”4 To dispel this view,
in the nineties many artists were concerned
with the forms’ use, which resolutely differs
from citation. What Buchloh criticizes as a
“historical image” is the illusion of a unity and
totality that conceals various historical aspects
under the guise of “style.” By comparison,
the history of forms becomes a tool box
thanks to the process of postproduction, as
seen from Mike Kelley to Henrik Olesen, or
Michel Majerus to Pierre Huyghe. By raising
awareness of the meaning and use of signs,
they propagate history as an incomplete
action and move toward the kind of art,
demanded by Walter Benjamin that redeems
the “defeated”—the political summons of the
formal phantoms of the past, brought before
the tribunal of the present. Majerus managed
to escape the “merchandise style” decried by
Buchloh thanks to his repetition of motifs, the
constant juxtaposition of serial figures, and
visible brushstrokes. The results were some,
at times, brutal collisions, but through them
he rediscovered the essence of “modernist
collage,” whereby “the various fragments
and materials of experience … are revealed,
exposed as tears, hollow spaces, irreconcilable
contradictions, incongruous specifications,
pure heterogenity.”5 Majerus’s painting never
allows itself to be beguiled by the things with
which it is fascinated.
The Pop monumentality and motley
iconography of his large compositions are at
first glance reminiscent of James Rosenquist’s
key works dating from the sixties. Over the
years, however, the art historical references
in his paintings became more explicit, in
particular with regards to Ellsworth Kelly,
Gerhard Richter, Andy Warhol, Cy Twombly,
and Martin Kippenberger. He “samples” details
from their works as a matter of course, like
they were a packet of Cornflakes. At the
same time, he engages with them in a subtle
dialogue whose traces can be read as his
composition unfolds. A nearly monochrome
image in dazzling yellow, for instance, features
a white spot with a figure inserted into it in the
bottom half of the picture, which in the choice
of motif and layout reveals the influence
of Basquiat; in another area of the canvas
the modulations in the bright background
subsume the figures placed on top, in a similar
way to Ed Ruscha’s works. Also crucial here,
however, is the reference to Rosenquist, for,
in contrast to Warhol or Lichtenstein, he calls
for a collage aesthetic, which also permeates
Majerus’s work. Critics often claimed the
creator of the colossal F-111 (1965) produced
a form of “Pop Surrealism” that illustrated
the oddness of urban life in the industrial age
precisely through the over-sized scale of its
figures. Rosenquist, wrote G. R. Swenson,
forces the viewer to become aware of the
disharmonious, anonymous elements of a
reality he is confronted with on a daily basis.
6 Despite the heterogeneity of the figures
and textual elements used by Majerus, in his
works the viewer has an impression neither
of oddness nor disharmony. As a mirror of
an epoch full of contradictions and brutal
clashes, his paintings underscore the breaks
and distortions between the signs that, due to
their familiarity, we hardly perceive anymore.
An Impressionism of Capital
In every game, the introduction of a new
element marks the start of a new session: the
historian and critic Hubert Damisch has shown
that every epoch in art has at its core at least
one game of opposites, whereby the opposed
forces emerge depending on which new
“conceptual figures” burst into the great game
of art.7
In the mid-19th century, the camera was
responsible for triggering the adventure of
Impressionism. It introduced new functions
into the equation that caused painters to
rethink the whole method of art production.
The Internet and the rapid spread of
digitalization proved just as revolutionary in
the nineties. Similar to photography one-anda-half centuries earlier, the primary impact of
these new technologies was mental, inspiring
new approaches to subject and composition.
Michel Majerus was among the first to really
avail himself of this new development. It could
even be said that his painting from the outset
was fully formed by the digital age, in fact,
it was digital in its very ambition. The basic
composition of his works was determined
by the tools of the computer, by “copy and
paste,” and the strong presence of the form
of the computer screen. His iconographic
portfolio is a response to the extreme
profusion of chaos that we enter when surfing
the Internet, to the ready availability of forms
and symbols it offers and to a cultural universe
where the old hierarchies have collapsed.
The comparison with Impressionism is not
accidental; this movement also arose from
the coming together of a new technology—
photography—with the introduction of tubes
of paint that enabled painters to work directly
in front of a motif. Claude Monet and Camille
Pissarro did not just invent an original way of
applying paint but a completely new sensory
approach: artists were now in the center of
the landscape, surrounded by their chosen
subjects and hypersensitive to the play of light
on form. Impressionism was also the art of
the Parisian suburbs, a practice that entailed
coming into close proximity with the subject
matter to be painted. Transferring this schema
to the technology of our age, it becomes
clear that digital devices have facilitated a
very similar shift: with little furor, new tools
have appeared that connect the computer
with numerous other periphery appliances
(photocopiers, scanners, editing programs for
images and film …). All of this can take place in
the privacy of the artist’s studio, thus allowing
contemporary artists to work from home
in a similarly radical way as Impressionism,
which required the artists to work outdoors.
Whereas they focused primarily on capturing
daylight, the main concern of the digital era
is to manage the influx of data streaming in
from outside within one’s own four walls. The
subjects whirl around before the eyes of the
artist under artificial light.
The mental space that Michel Majerus quickly
claimed as his own comprises shopping malls
and online shopping. Countless slogans and
graphic forms can be found in his paintings,
snapped up here and there, especially
marketing baselines (“newcomer,” “buy” etc.)
or brand names. The originality of this mental
space, however, is the complete fusion of
real and virtual, more precisely: in Majerus’s
paintings we see both the street and the
website as he blends the symbols of urban
centers (graffiti, skateboards, shop windows)
with the layout of the computer screen
(superimposed layers invocative of popups, duplication effects etc.) into one unit.
Majerus’s art presents us with city life against
the backdrop of the rising dominance of the
Internet. He is one of the first to show us
today’s world from this angle. In his paintings,
the city is transformed into a gigantic website
before our eyes: architecture, like the monitor,
turns into pure advertising space, for an online
existence whose sole purpose is commerce. In
his important painting series, which he created
in 2000 during his time in Los Angeles and
provided the material for the exhibition
Pop reloaded, Majerus found the ultimate
confirmation of his intuition: by including
video in his pictorial constructs, by placing
computer screens and canvases side by side
he succeeded in truly fusing city architecture
with the ceaseless advertising associated
with it; in this vision he embeds references
to art, clearly borrowed from Twombly or
Richter. He also incorporated himself in this
cityscape—his many (different) signatures
could be seen flickering across the video
screen—a confirmation that even the artist can
only assert himself as one logo among many
in this world of liquid crystals and computer
monitors.
The visual matrix of Pop Art that underlies
Majerus’s artworks is augmented and
complicated by the motif of the computer
screen, which is at once both visual
and conceptual. The forms, the effects
of graininess, or transparency, and the
functionalities of the monitor become a sort
of pictorial “master signifier,” to take up
Lacan’s concept, in just that moment when he
enters our everyday lives. As we have seen,
the PC is both an instrument of production
and the supplier of subjects, but in addition,
it can also be the source of new forms of
composition. “Perspective,” writes Rosalind
Krauss at the beginning of the seventies,
“is the visual correlate of causality that one
thing follows the next in space according to
rule.” In Modernism, painting shed itself of the
monocular (spatial), centrist perspective and
replaced it with “a temporal one, i.e., history.”8
Clearly, the Internet and cultural globalization
generate new ways of perceiving human space
which can hardly be represented accurately
by its physical coordinates alone. In the
works of globally active artists, perspective
has since become geographic (mobility,
travel, and cultural nomadism as methods of
composition) and historic (heterochrony as
the spontaneous perception of the world).
One figure no longer “follows the next” to
give us an ordered impression of the universe
but, conversely, is juxtaposed in a play of
transparencies and chaotic collisions that aim
to reproduce the complex heterochrony of our
experiences in the networks of the globalized
world. Majerus’s paintings address this
question directly: fields of color, brushstrokes,
graffiti, logos, slogans, enlarged details from
commercials, and well-known figures from
art history are brought together without
any hierarchies and before backdrops that
are always reminiscent of the imperturbable
computer screen, always ready for the next
sequence.
It is no coincidence that Majerus intuitively
recognized a connection between his work
and that of Ellsworth Kelly. In contrast to
most abstract painters of his time such as
Morris Louis, Kenneth Noland, or Frank Stella,
Kelly’s artworks contain close references
to the outside world. His motifs stem from
the memory of visual phenomena, be it the
form of a window that he saw in Paris or the
space between two objects. Similar to Kelly’s
work, Majerus also deals with memories; his
works are composed of mnemonic traces
of visual impressions. Putting it another
way, we could say that independent of their
material origins, the symbols and forms that
he gathers in his compositions are always a
variation of a concrete memory from daily
life—to reiterate—without ever lapsing into the
quasi Surrealist strangeness of Rosenquist,
for instance. Majerus’s space is obviously
related to a precisely remembered image of
streets covered in graffiti, window displays
in shopping malls or advertising brochures.
He was more concerned with “impressions”
than with a theory of pictorial space and his
work is derived more from flash photographs
than from any kind of formalism. He allowed
himself to be guided by his keen sense for
the relations between form and color. This
aspect creates a common thread throughout
his oeuvre. Paul Cézanne believed that a
painter was only indebted to the logic of
color, stating that whoever could truly feel
could also truly think—painting is first and
foremost optics.9 From the breathtaking array
of colors in his first painting, dominated by
glowing yellow, light pink, pale blue, and lurid
greens, to his last monochrome gradations of
black, Majerus’s artworks are ultimately short,
gripping stories told with colors.
1. Irving Sandler, Le Triomphe de l’art américain, T.2, Les
Années 1960, Paris 1990.
2. Le Capital: tableaux, diagrammes et bureaux d’études,
exh. cat. Centre Régional d’Art Contemporain (CRAC),
Sète 1999.
3. Nicolas Bourriaud, Postproduction, Dijon 2002.
4. “Figures d’autorité, chiffres de regression,” in Benjamin
Buchloh, Essais Historiques I, Paris, 1992, p. 38.
5. Ibid., p.39.
6. G. R. Swenson, Sandler 1990 (as in note 1), p. 190.
7. Hubert Damisch, Fenêtre jaune cadmium, Paris 1984.
8. Rosalind Krauss, “A view of modernism,” in Artforum,
September 1972.
9. Quoted by Gilbert Gatellier, in Cézanne, Paris 1968.
Michel Majerus, Luxembourg artist
Michel Majerus
Michel Majerus, born in 1967 in Esch-sur-Alzette in Luxembourg.
Studied at fine arts’ academy in Stuttgart.
He died in a plane crash in 2002.
Personal exibitions
2011
Michel Majerus, Kunstmuseum Stuttgart,
Stuttgart, DE
Michel Majerus. zweihundervier
sechzigmalsechzig, neugerriemschneider,
Berlin, DE
2009
lost forever, neugerriemschneider, Berlin, DE
2006
Michel Majerus, Mudam, Musée d’Art Moderne
Grand-Duc Jean, Luxembourg, LU
2005
what looks good today may not look good
tomorrow, Kestnergesellschaft, Hanover, DE
demand the best don’t accept excuses,
Deichtorhallen Hamburg, Hamburg, DE
what looks good today may not look good
tomorrow, Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, NL
Michel Majerus. Installationen 92-02,
Kunsthaus Graz am Landesmuseum
Joanneum, Graz, AT
2004
Pop Reloaded, Tate Liverpool, Liverpool, GB
2003
Pop Reloaded, Hamburger Bahnhof, Museum
für Gegenwart, Berlin, D
2002
Sozialpalast, Brandenburger Tor, Berlin, DE
Leuchtland, Friedrich Petzel Gallery, New York,
US
controlling the moonlight maze,
neugerriemschneider, Berlin, DE
2000
if we are dead, so it is, Kölnischer Kunstverein,
Cologne, DE
demand the best don‘t accept excuses, Monika
Sprüth Galerie, Cologne, DE
The space is, where you’ll fi nd it, The Delfi na
Studio Trust, London, GB
1999
sein lieblingsthema war sicherheit, seine these
- es gibt sie nicht, neugerriemschneider,
Berlin, DE
1996
fertiggestellt zur zufriedenheit aller die
bedenken haben, neugerriemschneider, Berlin,
DE
Michel Majerus, Kunsthalle Basel, Basel, CH
aquarell, Hamburger Kunstverein, Hamburg,
DE
1994
gemälde, neugerriemschneider, Berlin, DE
Collective exibitions
2009
The World is Yours – Contemporary Art,
Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk,
DK
Extended. Sammlung Landesbank BadenWürttemberg , ZKM / Museum für Neue Kunst,
Karlsruhe, DE
2007
Comic Abstraction: Image-Breaking, ImageMaking, MOMA, The Museum of Modern Art,
New York, US
Reality Bites: Making Avant-Garde Art in PostWall Germany, Mildred Lane Kemper Art
Museum, St. Louis, US
2004
BIACS – Bienal Internacional de Arte
Contemporáneo de Sevilla, I Bienal de Arte
Contemporáneo de Sevilla, Sevilla, ES
2003
Heißkalt. Aktuelle Malerei aus der Sammlung
Scharpff, Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg,
DE
Sitings: Installation Art 1969-2002, MOCA, The
Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles,
US
2002
The Starting Line, Pinakothek der Moderne,
Munich, DE
2001
Freestyle, Museum Morsbroich, Leverkusen, DE
2000
The Sky is the Limit, Taipeh-Biennale, Taipeh,
CN
1999
German Open, Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg,
Wolfsburg, DE
dAPERTutto, 48. Esposizione Internazionale
d´Arte, La Biennale di Venezia, Venice, IT
1998
Manifesta 2, Biennale européenne d‘art
contemporain, Luxembourg, LU
1996
Wunderbar, Hamburger Kunstverein,
Hamburg, DE
Wunderbar, Kunstraum Wien, Vienna, AT
Michel Majerus, If we are dead, so it is, 2000. michel majerus estate, Berlin. Photo : F. Deval © mairie de Bordeaux
Heart of the city…
heart of urban cultures
The CAPC asserts its will to associate experimentation and quality, and public mobilization,
always more numerous, more diverse and more regular. The museum demonstrates its anchoring
in Bordeaux and its permanent work of investing the territory and linking the public. That’s why
during the summer season, the CAPC opens "the artwork - rampe" of skateboard if you are dead,
so it is gives to sport, cultural or social organisations. The museum becomes, the time of sessions,
a space of meeting between Michel Majerus's works and living urban cultures: space/time of
transmission, workshops, meetings, demonstrations, social link …
A social and environmental project
If you are dead, so it is, the ramp, a construction that is part and parcel of Bordeaux’s social
and environmental project. To build it, the CAPC called on the Chantiers Tramasset, whose
brief is to help people in situations of exclusion to re-integrate, through involvement in shipyard
carpentry projects.
At the end of the exhibition, and as part of a partnership between the CAPC, the 58th and
Darwin, Michel Majerus’s work will be dismantled and the ramp will be moved to the “Hangar”
on the Darwin Eco-System site, to join its project to develop skating.
www.chantierstramasset.fr - www.darwin-ecosysteme.fr
Partner associations
The 58th/Darwin
An eco-designed indoor skate-park dedicated
to urban cultures established on the site of
the former Niel Barracks, on the right bank at
Bordeaux Bastide.
www.darwin-ecosysteme.fr/le-qg-et-la-58eme
Board-O
All year round the association offers Skating
classes and courses for all kinds of public,
children and adults, novices and enthusiasts.
www.boardo.fr
Octopus
This association broaches skateboarding as a
culture and a lifestyle. With a skateboarding
school, the organization of “sporting” events
and cultural meetings for the promotion of
skateboarding and urban cultures, Octopus
is developing skateboarding from different
angles.
www.octopus-skate.org
AiRoller
Created by a small group of roller-skating
enthusiasts, the association organizes hikes
and offers urban skating courses, whose
brief is to train autonomous and responsible
skaters.
www.airoller.fr
GUE2M
The goal of this association (Glisse Urbaine
Entre 2 Mers/Urban sports between 2 seas)
is to promote and develop urban sports like
the BMX and Skateboarding, through courses,
demonstrations, events and advisory actions…
Based in southern Gironde, its programmes
are nationwide, thanks to the Festival
Vibrations Urbaines at Pessac, and the BMX
FR CUP.
Burgercom
An association of four young Bordeaux
graphic designers. Yohan Benazzouz, Martin
Caro, Adriend Colombié and Rémy Gendre
answered the CAPC’s invitation and, for the
Michel Majerus show, are proposing a graphic
world for all the documents available to the
public.
www.burgercom.fr
The “Sports” meetings
If you are dead, so it is, a monumental work in the shape of a skateboard ramp. And
functional! The Bordeaux associations AiRoller, Board-O, GUE2M, Octopus and the 58th,
all involved in the sports and skating world, have answered the CAPC’s invitation to
propose demonstration times, practical courses and even initiation classes.
First major rendez-vous on 2 June 2012.
French Skateboard Championships, Santa
Cruz & About Team
For the Bordeaux stage of the 2012 French
Skateboard Championships (2 and 3 June
2012) and at the invitation of Octopus and
the CAPC, Santa Cruz and About, recognized
world skating champions, are taking over
Michel Majerus’s work in the museum’s nave.
Saturday 2 June from 7-9 pm
Admission free
Practical skateboarding sessions for CAPC
visitors, trained by the association.
Sundays 24 June and22 July
from 11 am to 1 pm
French BMX Championships
www.bmx2012.fr
At the CAPC’s invitation and for the 2012 BMX
Bordeaux event, drivers from the BMX Stade
Bordelais will share their prowess with us in
the museum’s nave, pitting themselves against
Michel Majerus’s work
Friday 13 July at 3.30 pm
Admission free
Octopus
Skateboarding school and private visit
to the show
Wednesday 6 and 20 June and
Saturday 23 June from 11 am to 1 pm
AiRoller
Roller-skating initiation sessions for CAPC
visitors trained by the association
Wednesday 13 June and 19 September
from 5.45 to 7.45 pm
Practical session for members and private visit
to the show
Sunday 1 and 29 July from 11 am to 1 pm
Board-O
Demonstrations by professionals and
association members
Wednesday 4 and 11 July from 5.45 to 7.45
Practical session for members and private visit
to the show
Wednesday 27 June and 29 August
from 5.45 to 7.45 pm
GUE2M
Practical session for association members
and private visit to the show
Wednesday 12 September
from 2.30 to 5.30 pm
Skateboarding course and private visit
to the show
Wednesday 4, 11, 18 and 25 July
from 11.30 am to 1 pm
The 58th/Darwin
Closing evening for the Michel Majerus
exhibition: demonstrations by professionals,
cocktail and DJ.
Saturday 22 September from 6 to 11 pm
On skateboards and roller skates and by
foot, everyone will be able to tackle Michel
Majerus’s work. To take part, consult the
cultural programme or follow us on Facebook
and reserve your place!
All rendez-vous on:
www.twitter.com/CAPC musee
www.scoopit/t/capc
www.facebook.com/capc.musee
Artworks presented
in the exhibition
Cool white, 2000
Digital print on aluminum
450 x 640 x 6 cm
Private collection, Berlin
degenerated, 2001
Acrylic on canvas
280 x 400 cm
Collection d’art contemporain de la
République fédérale d’Allemagne
Michel Majerus, 2000
Video screening (DVD 30 min).
Variable dimensions
michel majerus estate, Berlin
Courtesy neugerriemschneider
pressure groups 3, 2002
Acrylic on cotton,
300 x 300 x 10,2 cm
michel majerus estate
Courtesy neugerriemschneider
mm1, 2001
Acrylic on cotton
260 x 300 cm
Private collection
Courtesy neugerriemschneider
Reminder, 1998
15 acrylic panels on canvas, lacquer
on aluminium, 20 paintings on
canvas, text painted on wall, wall and
stairs
Variable dimensions
Fnac Inv. : 2000-457
Déposit of Centre national des arts
plastiques – ministère de la Culture
et de la Communication, Paris, 2007
MoM Block Nr.5, 1996
Acrylic on canvas
200 x 180 cm
Private collection
Courtesy neugerriemschneider
MoM Block Nr.11, 1997
Acrylic on cotton
200 x 180 cm
Collection Charles Asprey
Depression, 2002,
Acrylic on cotton
279,5 x 399 cm
Collection Edith et Jean Majerus
MoM Block Nr.33, 1998
Acrylic on canvas
200 x 180 cm
Private collection
enough, 1999
Acrylic on canvas
250 x 400 cm
Collection Sander
MoM Block Nr.68, 2000
Acrylic on canvas
200 x 180 cm
Private collection
Erwachet!, 1999
Lacquer on aluminium
277 x 420 cm
Collection Edith et Jean Majerus
MoM Block Nr.89, 2000
Acrylic on canvas
200 x 180 cm
Munich Re Art Collection
Fries, 2001
Acrylic on canvas
280 x 400 cm
Tate : Purchased from funds provided
by Evelyn, Lady Downshire’s Trust
Fund 2004
no more, 1999
Acrylic on canvas
250 x 400 cm
Collection Boros, Berlin
Gewinn, 2000
Acrylic on canvas
480 x 700 cm
15 parts
Each 160 x 140 cm
Courtesy Skarstedt Gallery, New York
If we are dead, so it is, 2000
Wood, digital print, multiplex, acrylic,
lacquer
300 x 960 x 4200 cm
michel majerus estate, Berlin
It’s cool man, 1998
Lacquer and silkscreen on aluminium
251 x 548 x 15,5 cm
Collection Reno et Veit Görner
liebt euch 2, 1999
Lacquer and digital print on
aluminium,
280 x 300 x 4 cm
Private collection
Courtesy neugerriemschneider
nothing is permanent, 2001
Acrylic on canvas
260 cm x 450 cm
Collection Reno et Veit Görner
ohne Titel (Collaboration Nr.6), 1999
Acrylic and silkscreen on canvas
200 x 180 cm
Private collection, Berlin
Pathfinder, 2002
Digital print on vinyl
380 x 290 x 3,5 cm
michel majerus estate
Courtesy neugerriemschneider
pressure groups 1, 2002
Acrylic on cotton
300 x 300 x 10,2 cm
michel majerus estate
Courtesy neugerriemschneider
pressure groups 2, 2002
Acrylic on cotton
300 x 300 x 10,2 cm
michel majerus estate
Courtesy neugerriemschneider
Tron 10 (Polystrol-Spiegel), 1999
Silkscreen on canvas, polystyrene
mirror
300 x 300 cm
Private collection
Courtesy neugerriemschneider
Untitled (violet), 1997
Acrylic on canvas
300 x 320 cm
Collection Musée d’Art Moderne
Grand-Duc Jean, Mudam
Luxembourg
Donation des Amis des Musées d’Art
et d’Histoire, Luxembourg
what looks good today may not look
good tomorrow, 1999
Acrylic on canvas
303 x 341 cm
Collection Reno et Veit Görner
what looks good today may not look
good tomorrow, 1999
Acrylic on canvas
303 x 341 cm
Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg
Yet sometimes what is read
successfully, stops us with its
meaning no.II, 1998
Lacquer and digital print on
aluminium
278,5 x 485 x 15,5 cm
Private collection
Courtesy neugerriemschneider
3mmT-1, 2001
Acrylic on canvas
280 x 400 cm
Collection Landesbank BadenWürttemberg
3mmT-2, 2001
Digital print on PVC
280 x 400 cm
Collection Charles Asprey
Pictures available for the press
Michel Majerus
mm1, 2001
Acrylic on cotton
260 x 300 cm
Private collection
© michel majerus estate.
Courtesy neugerriemschneider, Berlin
Michel Majerus
pressure groups 1, 2002
Acrylic on cotton
300 x 300 x 10,2 cm
© michel majerus estate.
Courtesy neugerriemschneider, Berlin
Michel Majerus
Pathfinder, 2002
Digital print on vinyl
380 x 290 x 3,5 cm
© michel majerus estate.
Courtesy neugerriemschneider, Berlin
Michel Majerus
nothing is permanent, 2000
Acrylic on canvas
260 x 450 cm
Collection Reno et Veit Görner
© michel majerus estate.
Courtesy neugerriemschneider, Berlin
Michel Majerus
no more, 1999
Acrylic on canvas
250 x 400 cm
Collection Boros, Berlin
© michel majerus estate.
Courtesy neugerriemschneider, Berlin
Michel Majerus
what looks good today may not look
good tomorrow, 1999
Acrylic on canvas
303 x 341 cm
Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg
© michel majerus estate.
Courtesy neugerriemschneider, Berlin
Michel Majerus
enough, 1999
Acrylic on canvas
250 x 400 cm
Collection Sander
© michel majerus estate.
Courtesy neugerriemschneider, Berlin
Michel Majerus
pressure groups 2, 2002
Acrylic on cotton
300 x 300 x 10,2 cm
© michel majerus estate.
Courtesy neugerriemschneider, Berlin
Michel Majerus
pressure groups 3, 2002
Acrylic on cotton
300 x 300 x 10,2 cm
© michel majerus estate.
Courtesy neugerriemschneider, Berlin
Michel Majerus
liebt euch 2, 1999
Lacquer and digital print on aluminium,
280 x 300 x 4 cm
Private collection
© michel majerus estate.
Courtesy neugerriemschneider, Berlin
Michel Majerus
Untitled (violet), 1997
Acrylic on canvas
300 x 320 cm
Collection Musée d’Art Moderne
Grand-Duc Jean, Mudam Luxembourg
Donation des Amis des Musées d’Art et
d’Histoire, Luxembourg
© michel majerus estate.
Courtesy neugerriemschneider, Berlin
Michel Majerus
MoM Block Nr. 89, 2000
Acryl auf Leinwand / Acrylic on canvas
200 x 180 cm
Munich Re Art Collection
© michel majerus estate.
Courtesy neugerriemschneider, Berlin
Michel Majerus
MoM Block Nr. 33, 1998
Acrylic on canvas
200 x 180 cm
Private collection
© michel majerus estate.
Courtesy neugerriemschneider, Berlin
Michel Majerus
MoM Block Nr. 5, 1996
Acrylic on canvas
200 x 180 cm
Private collection
© michel majerus estate.
Courtesy neugerriemschneider, Berlin
Michel Majerus
cool white, 2000
Digital print on aluminum
450 x 640 x 6 cm
Private collection, Berlin
© michel majerus estate.
Courtesy neugerriemschneider, Berlin
Michel Majerus
Gewinn, 2000
Acrylic on canvas
480 x 700 cm
15 parts, Each 160 x 140 cm
Courtesy Skarstedt Gallery, New York
© michel majerus estate.
Courtesy neugerriemschneider, Berlin
Michel Majerus
it’s cool man, 1998
Lacquer and silkscreen on aluminium
251 x 548 x 15,5 cm
Collection Reno and Veit Görner
© michel majerus estate.
Courtesy neugerriemschneider, Berlin
Michel Majerus
degenerated, 2001
Acrylic on canvas
280 x 400 cm
Collection d’art contemporain de la
République fédérale d’Allemagne
© michel majerus estate.
Courtesy neugerriemschneider, Berlin
Michel Majerus
yet sometimes what is read successfully,
stops us with its meaning, no. II, 1998
Lacquer and digital print on aluminum
278,5 x 485 x 15,5 cm
Private collection
© michel majerus estate.
Courtesy neugerriemschneider, Berlin
Michel Majerus
3mmT-2, 2001
Digital print on PVC
280 x 400 cm
Collection Charles Asprey
© michel majerus estate.
Courtesy neugerriemschneider, Berlin
Michel Majerus
Tron 10 (Polystyrol-Spiegel), 1999
Silkscreen on canvas, polystyrene mirror
300 x 300 cm
Private collection
Courtesy neugerriemschneider
© michel majerus estate.
Courtesy neugerriemschneider, Berlin
Michel Majerus
Depression, 2002
Acrylic on cotton
279,5 x 399 cm
Collection Edith et Jean Majerus
© michel majerus estate.
Courtesy neugerriemschneider, Berlin
Michel Majerus
Erwachet!, 1999
Lacquer on aluminum
277 x 420 cm
Collection Edith et Jean Majerus
© michel majerus estate, 1999.
Courtesy neugerriemschneider, Berlin
Michel Majerus
3mmT-1, 2001
Acrylic on canvas
280 x 400 cm
Collection Landesbank BadenWürttemberg
© michel majerus estate.
Courtesy neugerriemschneider, Berlin
Exhibitions
Michel Majerus
31.05.2012 – 23.09.2012
Make-up
31.05.2012 – 02.09.2012
Observing and anticipating
31.05.20.2012 – 23.09.2012
The artwork and its archives
09.02.2012 – 09.12.2012
Press Info
CAPC musée d’art contemporain
Blaise Mercier
T. +33 (0)5 56 00 81 70
T. +33 (0)6 71 12 79 48
[email protected]
[email protected]
Mairie de Bordeaux
Service presse
T. +33 (0)5 56 10 20 46
[email protected]
Claudine Colin Communication
Samya Ramdane
T. +33 (0)1 42 72 60 01
[email protected]
Follow us
http://twitter.com/CAPCmusee
http://www.scoopit/t/capc
http://www.facebook.com/capc.musee
CAPC
musée d’art contemporain
Entrepôt Lainé. 7, rue Ferrère
F-33000 Bordeaux
Tél. +33 (0)5 56 00 81 50
Fax. +33 (0)5 56 44 12 07
[email protected]
www.capc-bordeaux.fr
Access by Tram
B line, CAPC stop,
C line, Jardin Public stop
Schedules
11h -18h
11h - 20h Wednesdays
Closed on Mondays and public holidays
Guided Tours
4 pm Saturdays and Sundays.
by appointment for groups
T. +33 (0)5 56 00 81 78
Library
14h – 18h, Tuesday to Friday
T. +33 (0)5 56 00 81 59
arc en rêve
centre d’architecture
T. +33 (0)5 56 52 78 36
[email protected]
Café Andrée Putman
Restaurant
11h -18h, Tuesday to Sunday
T. +33 (0)5 56 44 71 61
Partners
Société Générale is
the main partner of
Michel Majerus
exhibition
Permanents CAPC
Air France
Château Chasse-Spleen
The work and its archives
Château Haut-Selve
Nova Sauvagine
20 minutes
Château Fonchereau
Observing and anticipating
Has been funded with
support of the Drac Aquitaine
L’exposition Michel Majerus est reconnue
d’intérêt national par le ministère de la Culture
et de la Communication / Direction générale
des patrimoines / Service des musées de
France. Elle bénéficie à ce titre d’un soutien
financier exceptionnel de l’Etat.
The exhibition Michel Majerusis recognized as a national interest by the ministère
de la Culture et de la Communication / Direction générale des patrimoines /
Service des musées de France. She has been financially supported by the State
capc-bordeaux.fr