Michael Grossmann (painter)

Michael Grossmann in New York.

Michael Grossmann (born February 22, 1965 in Stuttgart - Bad Cannstatt ) is a German painter and printmaker . He lives and works in Munich .

life and work

Michael Grossmann studied philosophy, stage design and painting. His work can be divided into three phases.

1993 to 1999

The early works playfully explore the possibilities of the reception of events in the form of video installations and look for possibilities of clarity in the message of painting, e.g. B. in his stripe and line images.

1999 to 2004

Now a change is visible, especially through the two exhibitions red-turquoise I and red-turquoise II in the Graz Museum of Perception from 1998 to 2000, which are important for Michael Grossmann's. Grossmann is fascinated by scientific problems, as well as Ludwig Wittgenstein's language games and purely multiple works , together with his statement that pluralistic perception requires pluralistic ethics, comes close to radical constructivism and ends in the babel collection of drawings of around 100 pages . The studies on the Laws of Form by George Spencer-Brown from 2003/04 and above all the two-body simulation seeking yellow , in collaboration with the physicist Ralph Mönchmeyer, summarize for Grossmann the problems that arise from the different ways in which science can provide information and art as incompatible because they belong to two different semantic spaces. This concept of the semiosphere is derived from the literary work of Juri Lotman on spatial semantics and plays an important role in the further development of Grossmann's art.

2004 until today

Grossmann then began to concentrate again on the possibilities of the semantic space of painting. From now on, literature serves as a thematic foil and formal bridge, as it is closer to painting as an art form than science. First the picture cycle Finnegans Wake emerges and then in 2007 the large cycle 18 panels for Ulysses, also based on James Joyce . This led to the studies of Samuel Beckett with the 32-sheet Le Salaud etcher folder in 2009 and 2010 ! Il n'existe pas! and the large-format picture Losigkeit / Lessness / Sans as well as numerous other studies. The central content theme of both cycles is now clearly formulated, the semiosphere, which is now related to Lotman's and CS Peirce's work in the conceptual work Kontrariposte . Losigkeit leads via the cycle window pictures (2011) directly to smithereen's current works , in which the problem of the various semantic spaces is viewed as a positive multiplicity and a new summary of his work is a picture atlas. He brings this diversity together with the term postmodern according to Lyotard and leads it from the panel paintings and the allegorical working method to, according to Ellen Markgraf, "associative working method". From the window pictures onwards, what is shown is only quotations from art history, from literature and the history of science, which must be related to one another. The fragmentation, expressed in the English term smithereens , is also shown formally. The first exhibition of the smithereens in Munich is mainly shaped by smithereens: theatrum mundi I with its quotations to Arno Schmidt and Morton Feldman , both of whom he understands as postmodern and very close to postmodern. The quotes from prints, painting, photography and music are presented more loosely, but no longer concretely put together; Rather, the content-related network is only linked outside of what is shown: “Smithereens will no longer become a mosaic.” This type of border crossing becomes a working method, for which Grossmann borrows from Aby Warburg the term auxiliary sciences, which for Warburg is no less than the entire complex of Humanities and the natural sciences.

Web links

• Homepage Michael Grossmann
• Michael Grossmann in the forum anracom - work on James Joyce

Individual evidence

1. ^ Michael Grossmann: Maps of Maps in: Kybernetes , Vol. 36, Iss. 7/8, 2007.
2. ↑ Michael Grossmann, Ralph Mönchmeyer, seeking yellow  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , 2003  
3. ↑ Michael Grossmann, Finnegans Wake , 2004
4. ↑ Michael Grossmann, 18 panels for Ulysses , 2007
5. ↑ Michael Grossmann, 18 canvases for Ulysses ( Memento of the original from May 17, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , 2007 
6. ^ Gallery in Gelsenkirchen shows "Ulysses" works by the painter Michael Grossmann in: Der Westen from February 14, 2011.
7. ↑ Christin Wähner: 18 panel paintings for Ulysses by Michael Grossmann - an introduction . In: Parallax . Pp. 8–24, Zurich James Joyce Foundation & Verlag R, Munich, 2011
8. ↑ Michael Grossman, Le Salaud! Il n'existe pas!  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 4.7 MB), 2010  
9. ↑ Kurt Jauslin, Fragmentary Orders in Michael Grossmann's Beckett Studies , In: Graphische Kunst , Edition 1/2010, Edition Curt Visel, Memmingen
10. ^ Michael Grossmann, Beckett Studies: Score; Impromptus; Material preparation I (study books I - III) ( Memento of the original from May 17, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , 2008-2010 
11. ↑ Michael Grossmann, Kontrariposte  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 1.4 MB)  
12. ↑ Michael Grossmann, Schmidt / Feldman / Büchner ( Memento of the original from May 17, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , 2010 
13. ↑ Michael Grossmann, Georg Büchner / Arno Schmidt / Lenz / Calculations  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 2.8 MB), 2010–2011  
14. ↑ Michael Grossmann, smithereens ( Memento of the original from May 17, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , 2012 
15. ↑ ^{a b} Michael Grossmann, from Kalypso zu Smithereens ( Memento of the original from May 17, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , 2012 
16. ↑ Friedhelm Rathjen, Smithereens , In: Robert Weninger, Ed .: Repeated Spiegelungen , pp. 129–154, edition text + kritik, Munich, 2003
17. ↑ Aby Warburg (Aut.), Martin Warnke (Hrsg.): Gesammelte Schriften - Study Edition Vol. II.1: “The MNEMOSYNE Picture Atlas” , 3rd (compared to the 2nd unchanged) edition, Akademie Verlag, 2008