Word: majerus
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...Consider splash bombs 3 (2002), one of several giant acrylics in which Majerus incorporates the logo of those eponymous American water toys amid swirls of color that is smeared and partially erased. Or a canvas in which cuddly cartoon characters frolic in the snow beneath the work's menacing title, maybe you should annihilate (1993), in large, blood red letters. Other paintings include cameos by Super Mario Brothers, Lara Croft, the Road Runner, the General Electric logo and a giant Nike sneaker...
...Majerus' untitled (violet) (1997), in which a purple rectangle hovers at the top of the canvas dripping color like a pair of wet blue jeans, has a classic simplicity that suggests Mark Rothko or even Henri Matisse. For years, critics have been mentioning Majerus in the same sentence as contemporary giants like Ellsworth Kelly, Claes Oldenburg, Sigmar Polke, Robert Rauschenberg, Frank Stella and Andy Warhol - if only because he stole shamelessly from them. Majerus "quotes, spits out and recycles modernism," enthuses Mudam director Marie-Claude Beaud. "His painting seems to be cultivated, sensitive and trashy all at the same time...
...such delights as Wim Delvoye's interior of a gothic chapel, made of metal and punctuated by stained-glass windows depicting body parts, and Tobias Putrih and Sancho Silva's plywood shapes that can be assembled by museumgoers into furniture of their own design. Mudam has purchased a few Majerus paintings, though nearly all those on display have been lent by other museums. The artist remains a favorite of curators worldwide, from London's Tate Modern to Mexico City's Jumex Collection...
...Majerus barely had time to enjoy his fame. He studied at the Stuttgart Academy in the early 1990s and, after barely a decade as a working artist, began to establish a reputation along with Franz Ackermann, Jorge Pardo, Tobias Rehberger and a rising generation of young iconoclasts. Majerus made waves by painting the entire façade of the Italian pavilion at the 1999 Venice Biennale with a pastiche of famous artworks. In 2002 he covered Berlin's famed Brandenburg Gate with a digital rendering of a graffiti-blighted East Berlin housing block...
...then, Majerus was dividing his time between Los Angeles and his large eastern Berlin studio. On Nov. 6, 2002, the artist boarded a Luxair flight from Berlin to Luxembourg. It crashed in heavy fog 10 km from its destination, killing him and 19 others. He was 35 years old. Five years later, Michel Majerus' bold, outsize talent has returned to the country of his birth, to a museum that may help gain for Luxembourg the artistic glory that was once within his grasp...