Exhibitions

22. August 2021

Gereon Krebber - Keramocringe

Opening on Sunday, 22nd August 2021, 12h

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The Skulpturenmuseum Glaskasten Marl is currently showing the exhibition Keromocringe by Gereon Krebber. It contains the artist's ceramic works from the past twenty years. The ceramics are accompanied by works made of burned wood that structure the space. During the past six months, the Cologne artist received a scholarship from the European Ceramic Work Center in the Netherlands, where sculptures made up of clay are usually hardly feasible in terms of size and glazes. These new, almost oven-fresh works are now being presented in Marl along with ceramics that are more than twenty years old. The exhibition therefore offers a first retrospective overview of the work of the 48-year-old artist, who teaches at the Düsseldorf Academy.

Krebber's ceramic sculptures are moving, there seems to be something alive in them. The surfaces shimmer and the bodies bulge. One group of sculptures is composed as a classic beehive that, formed from flexible willow sticks and straw, already shows three-dimensional qualities to which hardly anything had to be added. The surrounding bead from a bundle of straw animated Krabber to "translate" it into ceramics. His "Tnösis" are made of dark clay that was fired to a medium height and glazed in multiple colors. For thousands of years, clay beads lying on top of one another have been used as a basic technique to build vessels. If the individual strands are not smoothed into one single wall piece, they remain visible as a three-dimensional relief. Towards the top, the cylinder closes with a convex lid which also seems to have slipped slightly out of balance. This play of forms and balance animates the sculpture similarly to the special kind of glazing. The glaze which seems to be solidyfied underlines the liveliness of the sculpture in a contrasting way. In the EKWC laboratory, Krebber was able to produce various glaze samples, and discovered classic Japanese high-temperature techniques for his work: when 1% iron oxide is added, it turns slightly grayish-turquoise, called celadon. At 10%, it turns into brownish-silver, called tenmoku - the surfaces of the sculptures in the Skulpturenmuesum are glowing.

The title “Keramocringe” needs translation: children nowadays say “cringe” when things get quirky, slightly uncomfortable and a bit embarrassing, but also a bit funny. The exhibition has exactly the same effect which is why it is the perfect artistic juxtaposition to the presentation by Günter Haeses weightless room sculptures made of wire located in the inner glass box.