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He isn't painting whats there. No its different, what he paints is there. New reality in paintings, created from remains of the past. Discover again with your eyes what you left behind or what was leaving you behind. This characterizes his paintings and drawings, known from the good old assemblage, or it becomes the painting itself. Commonly just old useless junk. In a spectacular campaign Jörn Michael was painting and drawing on used cake paper plates - characteristic - But even if it seems or refers to it sometimes, he is not fooling around. The artists view is directed to the ground, the ground of facts. There lies the truth. Maybe the artist adapted this view from the old mountain miners, which searched the mountains in there daily work. Seen subversive, painted rebellious.


Reinhold Lindner, cultural journalist, Augustusburg



Art comes from artisanship - they sometimes say laughingly. Jörn Michael’s art mainly originates from the ability to SEE. With eyes trained through photography he delves into the depths. Here and there he sees the unimagined and he unearths them with many different artistic means, which may sometimes pose a challenge for the beholder. With Indian ink and watercolour he enchants cream-stained cakeboards soaked in fat to become fascinating drawings. With chain saws and chalk he transforms old roof beams into bizarre sculptures, or he converts bellows from rabbit hide to miniature plastics. Rusty metal sheets, snatched from the tip or a skip, become grotesque heads or peculiar figures under his direction. At the same time he does not have to exert too much effort – the sight and perspective is the most important just like in photography. And he also creates quite some surprises in the comparatively classical techniques of painting, drawing, and graphic print design. He experiments with colours and patterns and allows the inspiration by the material to take over, but without diverging in substance.


Alexander Stoll, Art historian, Geyer, Germany.