Cory Arcangel talks at the Michel Majerus Symposium at Mudam

what looks good today may not look good tomorrow: The Legacy of Michel Majerus
Symposium
09 Nov 2022
@ Mudam Luxembourg

Cory Arcangel, talk + Q&A

Through a series of talks and lecture-performances followed by a panel discussion, the symposium investigates the influence of Michel Majerus’s (b. 1967, Esch-sur-Alzette – d. 2002, Niederanven) work on the practice of the ‘digital-native’ generation of artists, curators and researchers.

International speakers working in and researching the field of visual arts will address the relevance of Majerus’s reflections today, while discussing different aspects of his legacy.
In the span of a short yet exceptionally prolific career, Majerus has captured his time, decades marked by the expansion of globalised consumer culture and digital technology. His large-scale paintings and installations, characterised by the ‘sampling’ and collaging of an eclectic repertoire of imagery and text borrowed from art history, video games, commercials or electronic music resonate with the image and information frenzy of the Internet 2.0 pervading contemporary society. 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 remain of unfailing relevance today.
The symposium what looks good today may not look good tomorrow: The Legacy of Michel Majerus is the first chapter of a programme dedicated to the work of Michel Majerus and will be followed in Spring 2023 by an exhibition at Mudam and a publication gathering the contributions to the symposium.

Cory Arcangel (b. 1978, Buffalo, New York) is an artist, composer, curator, and entrepreneur living and working in Stavanger, Norway. Arcangel explores the potential and failures of old and new technologies, highlighting their obsolescence, humour, aesthetic attributes and, at times, eerie influence in contemporary life. Applying a semi-archeological methodology, his practice explores, encodes and hacks the structural language of video games, software, social media and machine learning, treating them as subject matter and medium. Using his essay ‘new comer’ (published as part of Michel Majerus 2022, (DCV, Berlin)) as a guide, Cory Arcangel will discuss Majerus’s work using two key encounters – one IRL and another virtual. The first encounter discussed is Majerus’ exhibition Leuchtland which Arcangel saw at Petzel Gallery in 2001 at 537 W 22nd Street, New York. The second encounter is Majerus’ painting Ohne Titel (2000) which floated (without caption) into Arcangel’s feed in 2014 on Instagram. These two encounters, seen through the lens of Arcangel’s own non-linear journey from composition student to contemporary artist, will be used to think about Majerus’ formal and conceptual position which Arcangel argues expand well beyond his reputation as a ‘painter’. His work has been exhibited in solo exhibitions at Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Zürich (2015); Reykjavik Art Museum, Iceland (2014); Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh (2012); Whitney Museum, New York (2011); Barbican Art Center, London (2011) and Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin (2010).