Michel Majerus (1967-2002)

‘What’s interesting in Majerus’ work is the radical sense of presence it conveys, and its complete lack of sentimentality. It’s ugly, it’s spectacular, it’s superficial, but there is no reason to moralise or indulge in melancholic reflections upon the loss of authenticity. Majerus does not mourn the death of painting, but instead celebrates the abundance of imagery accumulated throughout the history of art, and generated today with increasing speed by the media and new information technologies. The temporality of his works is that of a floating and all-encompassing Now, analogous, perhaps, to that of the World Wide Web’ (D. Birnbaum, quoted in, D. Birnbaum, ‘The Power of Now’, in frieze, Issue 34, May 1997, reproduced at http:/www.frieze. com/issue/article/the_power_of_now/).