An Artist Talk by Michael Krebber
Michael Krebber is a Cologne-based German artist whose practice incorporates painting, drawing, installation, critical writing and bookmaking. He has taught a painting class at the Städelschule in Frankfurt since 2002. His critical writing has been published in Texte zur Kunst and Artforum.
“For several decades Krebber has investigated painterly issues, but his praxis is far from the bravura and self-assurance that formalist painting has traditionally represented. Instead of attacking – with full force, so to speak – selected painterly issues, Krebber takes a far more subtle, careful approach where strategies like deferral, hesitation and even artistic failure are applied. Throughout his highly influential career Krebber has maintained a relatively limited production and has constantly avoided pigeonholing within a particular style or mode of production. His whole oeuvre takes the form of a long succession of digressions or evasive actions, where the lack of focus and stability may seem to be the only unifying criterion one can find.
The self-reflexivity we are talking about here is of course something quite different from the modernist medium-specificity where the painting became self-reflexive in the light of a particular view of what were and what were not the medium’s own defining qualities. On the contrary, Krebber’s art is perhaps the best example of how painting is woven into an intricate system of external references. In most cases these references are not directly apparent in the works themselves.”
— Excerpt from Gambaroff, Krebber, Quaytman, Rayne, Bergen Kunsthall 2010.
As part of the Distinguished Visiting Artist Program at UBC’s Department of Art History, Visual Art and Theory, Krebber will talk about or around concepts concerning the dandy in relation to representations of painting.
Michael Krebber was born in Cologne and currently lives in Cologne and Frankfurt. His publications include Alien Hybrid Creatures, (2005) including the essay “Puberty in Painting”; ICAL KRBBR PRDLY PRSNTS GART JAS, JON KLSY, JOSF STRA (2006); Puberty in Teaching (2008); and Respekt Frischlinge/ Je suis la chaise/ London Condom (2008).
Weblinks
Artforum: Daniel Birnbaum on Michael Krebber – http://artforum.com/inprint/id=9499
Contemporary Art Daily: Michael Krebber at Maureen Paley – http://www.contemporaryartdaily.com/2011/02/michael-krebber-at-maureen-paley/
Notes on Looking: Krebber at Richard Telles – http://notesonlooking.com/?p=1162
Contemporary Art Daily: Michael Krebber at Galerie Daniel Buchholz – http://www.contemporaryartdaily.com/2010/07/michael-krebber-at-daniel-buchholz/
