Michel Majerus - Contemporary Art Evening Sale London Wednesday, February 27, 2008 | Phillips

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  • Provenance

    neugerriemschneider, Berlin

  • Catalogue Essay

    Michel Majerus was a key figure amongst a new generation of painters who emerged from Berlin in the 1990s gaining international recognition. With his untimely death in 2002 his works have remained predominant amongst the contemporary art world. While painting is undeniably the artist’s favourite medium, his inspiration draws from many aspects of popular culture such as computer games, digital imagery, film, pop music, trademarks, and corporate cultures. Majerus’s work references explicitly Art from of the twentieth century with works by artists such asWilhem de Kooning, CyTwombly, Frank Stella, as well as the master of Pop Art. ‘Your Ideas Get you Killed’ belonged to an ambitious series of large-format works which he executed during his stay in Los Angeles in 2001. The painting’s striking blend of styles, materials and textures makes up a confusing visual landscape, which finds its way indirectly into Majerus’s work. The monumental scale of the LA paintings reflects the gigantic billboards lining the freeways as well as referring to the formless scale of the urban conglomerate itself. Central to Majerus was his distinctive ability to elusively orchestrate a pre-existing stock of images that regularly bombard our senses and perceptions. He recognized the opportunites 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 bewilderment conglomeration of digital technologies and consumer choices present in global cultural media.

184

Your Ideas Get you Killed

2001
Oil on canvas.
279.5 x 400cm. (110 x 157 1/2 in).
Signed, titled and dated ‘M Majerus Your Ideas Get you Killed 2001’.

Estimate
£50,000 - 70,000 

Sold for £72,500

Contemporary Art Evening Sale

28 Feb 2008, 7pm
London