Flaggs (Against Nature)

From the mid-eighties, Michael Krebber gained fame as the assistant and alter ego of the enfant terrible of the German art world Martin Kippenberger (1953–1997). Whereas Kippenberger acted as the bold, satirical critic of politics and the art world, Krebber was the composed but influential conceptualist behind the scenes. As a young artist, Krebber rejected the Neo-Expressionism of celebrities like Lüpertz and Baselitz. He favoured a more distant and ironic approach to the history of our visual culture (both high and low). His thorough analysis (deconstruction) of the medium of painting meant that he hardly ever picked up a brush anymore.

The work Flaggs (Against Nature) consists of polyester children’s bedspreads (printed with horses) and patterned curtain material (spots and checks of different sizes). The pictures are not painted and have undergone no treatment other than being stretched on a canvas stretcher. The extremely simple source of the material that served as the basis for Flaggs (Against Nature) (i.e. the fabric market) contrasts with the complex world of ideas to which it refers and from which it originated. Krebber’s work offers art experts a finely meshed network of references to the German post-war tradition of painting.