Michael Krebber (b. 1954)

Painted in 2015, MK.314 is a delightfully deflated snail from Michael Krebber. Rendered in just a few lines, Krebber wonderfully captures the snail’s collapse; above his head, a single fish swims along the spare composition. The painting is an interpretation of a snail painting made by the Duchess of Cambridge while she was visiting a charity in Los Angeles, but in Krebber’s work, the snail has collapsed upon itself. The artist’s early career was spent working as a studio assistant for Markus Lüpertz and then Martin Kippenberger, both of whom had studios in Cologne. Against the heady atmosphere of the city’s art scene, these artists were intensely concerned with the question of what more, if anything, could be achieved in painting. Building on this theme, Krebbe responded by adopting ‘postures of refusal that render him an almost Bartleby-esque figure at times’ (M. Scheper, ‘Michael Krebber’, Artforum, n. date, https://www.artforum.com/picks/michael-krebber-67055). Like Herman Melville’s portrait of rebellion, Krebber too is unwilling to be defined. Part of the joy of MK.314 is its refusal to be pinned down. The painting is both a riposte to the Duchess’ initial sketch and a continuation of the snail’s own story.