Michael Krebber

Maureen Paley is pleased to announce a solo presentation of new work by Michael Krebber. This will be his fourth exhibition at the gallery.

Would you confirm that ‘painting’ is used / explored by you as a filter? Might that question ask about a possible program of ‘painting’? Its application? In that case: painting, as well as any other activity, runs as an application that regularly and constantly changes, from for one person communicating with himself, to 2 people or more. Like society, here the programs runs wild, everyone might be in a different program, either actively or passively, and this is why I called this exhibition The ridiculized snails.

Is ‘painting’ still seen as a controversial activity? 
Jack Smith said that buying and possessing art was wrong, it was against the idea of art. Here lies the contradiction.But painting is also qualified as an image of the enemy, it therefore can easily seem to be used as a controversial activity. This became kind of common knowledge for the ‘knowing ones’ and I think I benefit a bit from that. And it is still an open game.
Please read my text “Puberty in Painting”.

Do you have to ‘defend’ artistically the use of painting as a medium? 
I think “Puberty in Painting” says it all and I do not want to defend or preserve it.
Instead of ‘defending’, I would prefer to throw in the idea of: identification with the aggressor.

Is painting an idea? A concept? A category? 
There is the issue of painting’s production against the issue of the institution of painting.

What type of information does your painting contain?
 Depends on who will look at it. Mixed in with all kinds of personal issues of mine. This could also become a game, if somebody wanted to play.

Anecdotes, references, social networks have become an integrated visible part in your work. Does it belong to the ‘painting’? 
I heard somebody using the term ‘expanded painting’. In his text “Painting beside itself”, David Joselit quotes Martin Kippenberger who said in an interview about a painting, that not only the painting was important, but everything around it too, the people that the painter talked to, his whole network and also the noodles that he ate.

Michael Krebber in conversation, CAPC musée d’art contemporain, Bordeaux, France, 2012.

Born in 1954, Michael Krebber lives and works in Cologne, Germany. He is currently a Professor at the Städelschule, Frankfurt am Main.

Recent solo exhibitions include Les escargots ridiculisés, CAPC musée d’art contemporain, Bordeaux, France, 2012©; C-A-N-V-A-S, Uhutrust, Jerry Magoo and guardian.co.uk Painting, Greene Naftali, New York, USA, 2011; Here Comes The Sons, Real Fine Arts, New York, USA, 2011; FROM MCB TO MBC, Richard Telles Fine Art, Los Angeles, USA, 2010; Miami City Ballet, Galerie Daniel Buchholz, Berlin, Germany, 2010 and Pubertät in der Lehre/Puberty in Teaching, Kölnischer Kunstverein, Cologne, Germany, 2008©. Selected group exhibitions include Gambaroff, Krebber, Quaytman, Rayne, Bergen Kunsthall, Bergen, Norway, 2010©; Morror, Michael Krebber and Michaela Eichwald, International Project Space, Birmingham, UK, 2010; Held Up By Columns, Renwick Gallery, New York, USA, 2010; At Home/Not At Home: Works from the Collection of Martin and Rebecca Eisenberg, CCS Bard Hessel Museum of Art, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY, USA, 2010; Conditions of Display, The Moore Space, curated by Gean Moreno, Miami, USA, 2007; It Takes Something to Make Something: The Rausch Collection, Portikus, Frankfurt am Main, Germany, 2007; Dracularising, Neue Alte Brucke, Frankfurt am Main, Germany, 2007; The Most Contemporary Picture Show, Actually, Kunsthalle Nuernberg, Germany, 2006; Formalismus, Kunstverein Hamburg, Germany, 2004 and Rhinegold: Art from Cologne, Tate Liverpool, Liverpool, UK, 2004.

Michael Krebber