Michael Just (born 1979, Frankfurt/Main, Germany) is an interdisciplinary artist based in Berlin, Germany , southeast Austria and Hong Kong. He studied Fine Art at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf with Daniel Buren (Master/Meisterschüler 2007), received an MFA in Art Practice from Goldsmiths, University of London (2009) and participated in the Whitney Museum Independent Study Program in New York City (2010/2011). He is currently completing a PhD at the City University of Hong Kong, School of Creative Media, on post-anthropocentric urbanism.

He was a DAAD Postgraduate Fellow (2007/2008) and a recipient of the EHF-Fellowship, Konrad-Adenauer-Foundation (2007/2008). Residencies include the Palazzo delle Arti Napoli (2010), Villa Aurora Los Angeles (2012), Dongcheng District Beijing (2017), the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul (2018), 16×16, Lagos (2020) and the Agder Center for Contemporary Art, Kristiansand (2021). He was the recipient of the Deutsche Bank Prize for Emerging Sculptors (2005) as well as several project grants from the DAAD, Incontri Internazionale D’Arte, the J.F. Costopoulos Foundation, the Goethe-Institut, the Konrad-Adenauer-Foundation, Kunstfonds Bonn, Senat Berlin and IFA – Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen.

His work is held in international collections and has been shown in institutions around the world such as Garash Galeria Mexico DF (2004), Avenirs de Villes, Nancy (2005), the MRAC Sérignan (2005, 2006 and 2019), Benaki Museum Athens (2005), Domaine Pommery Reims (2007), KIT – Kunst im Tunnel, Düsseldorf (2008), Cornerhouse Manchester and A Foundation London, Bloomberg Newcontemporaries (2009), Palazzo delle Arti Napoli (2010), Artisanal House New York City (2013), Eigen+Art Lab Berlin (2014), Cydonia Gallery Dallas (2015), Deutsche Bank KunstHalle Berlin (2015), Peppermint Holding Berlin (2016), Dongcheng District Beijing (2017) and the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art Seoul (2018). He has taught, lectured, presented and participated in conferences and panel discussions internationally such as at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, Goldsmiths University of London, Accademia di Belle Arti Napoli, Art Center College of Design Pasadena, University of Texas Dallas, Booker T High School Dallas, Accademia di Belle Arti Roma, Goethe-Institut Beijing, MMCA Seoul and Goethe-Institut Glasgow. Curatorial projects include the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art Changdong (2018).

Michael Just has presented at academic conferences such as Global Green Media Network, Hong Kong Baptist University (2022) and DACA – Data Art for Climate Action, CityU Hong Kong (2022). Workshop presentations and participation include Artificial Intelligence Autumn Session, Goethe-Institut Glasgow (2019), Beyond Smart Cities, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab and HK Innovation Node (2022) and CAMP Notes on Education, Shared Campus “Commoning Curatorial and Artistic Education” at documenta fifteen (2022).

Michael Just works mainly in installation, text and time- and process-based, often times discursive and intersubjective projects as well as studio-based two-dimensional, image-based mediums. A particular focus lies on the intersections of art, architecture, urbanism and design. His practice prioritizes a post-conceptual approach over medium-specificity and could be described as a network of permeating, interacting and interrelating fields that form a complex whole. Using notions of plasticity to develop fluid concepts of the politics of form and the form of politics, Just is ultimately concerned with history understood as the process of change. Unfolding in between deep history and the anthropogenic condition, his work investigates and analyzes notions of becoming as they pertain to opening up possibilities for the formation of future societies and their material conditions of production. For art to contribute to the constitution of the future, his practice attempts to facilitate a discourse that merges culture with technology, science, the socio-political and ecology. There is a pedagogical dimension to his approach at the heart of which is the production of a critical audience. His work is, therefore, also concerned with an investigation of methodologies of knowledge production, using marginality as both a perspective on and an approach to an analysis of the production of subjectivities.