Gereon Krebber: Boards with Bumps

January 10 – February 15, 2009

Number 35 is pleased to present the first New York exhibition for Cologne-based artist Gereon Krebber. Using everyday materials such as spaghetti, gelatin and plastic wrap, Krebber creates forms that usurp the familiarity of the material.

Gereon Krebber is interested in banal objects and materials. The sculptures he creates are usually massive but have an easy presence. They hang from the rafters in what should be a quick drop to the floor but is stopped in motion by the fact that it was created with balloons and plastic wrap, so that the piece is not weighty. Or they ooze from doorways, stopped by a visible geometry, yet jiggling with the breeze from every passerby. Or they simply sit in the middle of the room, the smell of oats quietly emanating from its simple form.

In this exhibition, Krebber fills the gallery space with a series of boards, intersecting the space diagonally in peaks and valleys. Wrapped in colored plastic wrap, it has moments where even the linear quality is disrupted by disease-like bumps. It is a structure that has failed, collapsed on itself, yet glistens in its perfect pastel skin. Like many of Krebber's works, it is filled with contradictions, beautiful and ugly, perfect and failed, serene and obscene.

“GEREON KREBBER: ‘BOARDS WITH BUMPS’”, The New York Times, Roberta Smith, February 13, 2009. Download PDF.