The illustrator and graphic artist Michael Jordan (*1972 in Erlangen) studied media illustration in Hamburg, then printmaking at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna. In 1999 he won first prize in the Fumetto – International Comix Festival Lucerne competition. In 2002 he was a UNESCO scholarship holder at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Chiang Mai, Thailand. He taught, among others, at Webster University Vienna, the Offenbach School of Design, the Kassel School of Art and Middlebury College Vermont, USA. Michael Jordan is a member of the artist group Tonto from Graz since 2003. In 2022 he was awarded the City of Erlangen’s Culture Prize. His works have already been exhibited in Stockholm, Vienna, Shenzhen and Berlin, among others.

“No matter which direction you go, you will never reach yourself.” But the protagonist to whom the words are addressed cannot remain silent. He has to continue through the dreamlike and surreal world in which his creator Michael Jordan placed him. The scene comes from his first full-length graphic novel with the telling title “Why We Are Tired.” Jordan’s stories from pictures are atmospherically dense as well as graphically and narratively complex. They usually tell of a world that is experienced as dystopian and at the same time bizarre, which hardly contains anything tangible or understandable, and which seems to encourage the artist to play with hints with pleasure for this very reason. 

Text: Natalie de Ligt (Summer 2023)