MK.291

Details

No longer included in Sanchez. Provenance: Greene Naftali Gallery, New York, with label on the reverse; private collection, Italy, acquired from the aforementioned.

Description

• With the formal reduction typical of the artist’s work
• Acquired from Greene Naftali in New York and has been privately owned ever since
• Krebber’s works can now be found in the Museum of Modern Art, New York, Center Pompidou, Paris, the Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin, and the Museum Ludwig, Cologne and Museum Brandhorst, Munich among others. The large-format canvas “MK.291” is characteristic of Michael Krebber’s oeuvre: a radical, at first glance confusing, reduction of painterly expression. Just a few painterly gestures are placed on a white-primed canvas in a vivid red. There almost seems to be a hesitation between continuation and interruption, between completion and failure. Krebber questions or uses the medium of painting like no other. Despite, or perhaps because of this, his paintings reveal a deep devotion to the craft and its aesthetics in their skillful, even delicate handling. With his conceptual approach, which he developed during his time as an assistant to Martin Kippenberger, Krebber became famous in the Cologne art scene of the 1980s and 1990s. This attitude is based on the constant doubt about the possibility of still painting pictures in the 21st century. This hesitant attitude – he is often compared to Herman Melville’s “Bartleby” – makes Michael Krebber unique. Dandy, painter, strategist: “The fact that I call myself an artist,” Krebber once said, “is enough.”