Michael Krebber

(2015)

Michael Krebber’s latest paintings [at his Maureen Paley exhibition of 2015*] are all gesturo-minimalism – little marks and dabs staining otherwise pristine canvases. At least the ones on the ground floor, the clear highlights of this exhibition. MP-KREBM-00090, 2015, is just a copper dash running down the right side of the canvas: a scar that will never heal. MP-KREBM-00090: pure rhythm and splotch. Two thick marine blue handles roughly equidistant on either side. A lighter blue dash in the upper right corner. On the left, there’s that copper dab again, this time a bit smaller – an afterthought, we’d call it, if it didn’t seem so considered.

Upstairs, the canvases are nearly all completely covered in paint, but no less “restrained,” if that’s the word. MP-KREBM-00092, 2015, limits itself to blues of varied hues. Its centerpiece is a whirl that resembles a tornado funnel. The most densely structured painting in the show is MP-KREBM-00091, 2015, with its inferences of architectural structures looming somewhere beneath the layers of blue and yellow. Still, Krebs sticks to a general anti-all-overness in these works. Rounding it all up are four works rendered in paper with ballpoint pen. Among these, the tree swirl of MP-KREBM-00097, 2015, while MP-KREBM-00098, 2015, leaves us with an ear-like curve of maybe.

*Originally published, in slightly altered form, in Artforum.