Michael Najjar

ISEA2013

Born in 1966 in Landau, Germany, Michael Najjar attended the bildo Academy of Arts in Berlin from 1988 – 1993, where he was trained in the practices of conceptional and interdisciplinary art. During this time he discovered the visionary theories of media philosophers such as Vilém Flusser, Paul Virilio and Jean Baudrillard which have markedly influenced his later work. In his conceptual work Najjar magnifies and re-examines the potential of the technical image through constant reconstruction of time and space using a wide range of techniques in thematically focused work series. These range from depictions of the human body transformed by biogenetic intervention, transformation of megacities through condensed information networks, and virtualization of financial markets with smart algorithms to the future of space exploration based on new scientific, engineering, and technological outcomes. His pictorial language of form and content guides the viewer into a complex construction of simulated reality generated by the montage of numerous image sources and elements.