Background
Michael Krebber was born on April 26, 1954, in Cologne, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Germany.
Michael Krebber was born on April 26, 1954, in Cologne, Nordrhein-Westfalen, Germany.
Krebber studied painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Karlsruhe under Markus Lüpertz.
Krebber was an assistant in the studios of superstar German artists Martin Kippenberger and Georg Baselitz. But unlike the aforementioned German painters, Krebber’s paintings and drawings are often minimal and occasionally inscrutable. A recent series that’s become highly sought-after is his so-called “Snail” set of paintings, which sometimes consist of only one line. Other series have the uncanny feel of unfinished abstract paintings.
Michael Krebber has been leading a double life as a rumor for many years. He fostered this iridescence by exhibiting little or nothing. From a certain moment onward, the painter showed a bit more, but it was always about how much an artist ought to display. The scene of that critical self-staging as an actor of art was 1990s Cologne. On account of this prelude, it was for a long time difficult to distinguish Michael Krebber’s activities from what was said, purported, or speculated about him. For many young artists in Europe and the United States, Krebber offers a projection screen that can hardly be overestimated. While little known to the general public, many of his traits are negotiated within the art world. People actually work things through with him in mind.
"The Living Wedge", organized in cooperation with the Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art, Porto, presents a comprehensive selection of the artist’s works since the 1980s for the first time in Switzerland. The show is thus a culminating point of the Kunsthalle Bern’s program line that puts the meaning of painting for the present and future of art up for debate. Starting in 2002, Krebber became a teacher at Frankfurt’s Städelschule but he left the position in 2016, when he moved to New York, in the process influencing a group of younger artists who have become, over time, devotees.
Michael Krebber does not pander to anything, he doesn’t let himself be defined, he acts in a controlled manner, while remaining unpredictable. His means, his lines and spots, are often sparse and expansive at the same time. He is an artist torn between economizing and wasting. He succeeds in achieving the maximum with the least effort, without one being able to say what purpose this acumen serves. Krebber works within the formal language of abstract painting to humorously dissect art history and representational imagery. He often engages with contemporary culture to maintain a critique and commentary on present-day life and the art world economy.
Perhaps what we have here is someone who gambles for the highest stakes in deferring the unknown, thus keeping the possibility of an open ending in suspense. The word “hesitating” has repeatedly been used for his artistic moves. Something is delayed, shimmers in provisionality and indeterminacy so that a space of expectation can unfold. Yet the reason for this action could also lie in the self-referential desire to be surprised by oneself, and also to uphold one of the greatest potentials of art: the outcome of a movement that cannot be foreseen, the search that does not know where it will arrive.
Michael Krebber currently lives and works in New York. His work is in the collection of Museum of Modern Art in New York; CAPC Musée d'art Contemporain in Bordeaux; and Museum Brandhorst in Munich. He was awarded the Wolfgang Hahn Prize by the Museum Ludwig, Cologne, in 2015.
Quotes from others about the person
He’s a significant artist, and he falls into a category that’s typically called “painters’ painters.” That means a painter who’s revered by other painters but barely known to collectors.
