Michael Krebber's Non-Retrospective at CAPC Bordeaux

From November 15, 2012 to February 10, 2013, CAPC Musée d'art contemporain in Bordeaux presented over 150 works by Michael Krebber spanning 25 years. Curated by Alexis Vaillant, the show was framed not as a retrospective but as an 'overview' reflecting the artist's frenzied yet failing scope. Krebber approaches painting through a mixed profusion of registers (figuration and abstraction), supports (synthetic fiber, silk, canvas, cut sailboard), techniques (accumulation, cropping, loss), and references to other artists such as Sigmar Polke, Georg Baselitz, and Donald Judd. His compositional process functions like a program that questions its own capacity to transform, opening possibilities for other games. Figures, gestures, attitudes, and anecdotes develop in all directions from multiple sources. Painting emerges as a vast field of maneuvers in gestation, ruins, transit, or margin—neither burning its past nor resurrecting it. Krebber does not seek to stabilize elements or suppress weaknesses, but with a disconcerting mix of detachment and lightness, acts as an agent of tension, vertigo, and rout. Text by Didier Arnaudet.