OK so some of these paintings are minimal - really minimal. There’s a six foot canvas with literally just one stoke of brown paint. On a very thin canvas, a nice linen canvas.
Is it a joke, is it a game? It’s hard to say. It does do what I like about abstract art, it makes me appreciate other things, like the cupboard and the white air con unit in the room which has small black square holes all over it. The paintings are also quite soothing.
It’s probably crass to actually discuss the concept of buying these things, but why would you need to when you could make them yourself - are you just buying the name, or the idea?
On the positive it does make you appreciate what’s here, you appreciate the colour of the occasional strokes of paint, you appreciate the brush strokes and look at the way they move. Is it just very conceptual?
Upstairs is much better. Not the drawings which again are very minimal with just little things, like a little bit of a cello. The drawings remind me of Polke, just not as bizarre.
But there is one great painting up here. It’s sharp pink and dark purple. The way the dark purple is painted over the sharp pink is beautiful, you can still sense the pink underneath and feel the texture of the paints in your mind. It’s also really sensitive the way just a little bit of pink is left at the bottom of the canvas.
Reading the blurb you can see that the paintings all have a similar title, such as MP-KREBM-00097 and MP-KREBM-00098. It make you think that each one is just part of a progression in this artists search, and I find that quite inspiring, as well as the fact that you don’t have to spend months on a painting to make it great.
Maureen Paley gallery, Michael Krebber, 5 September - 4 October 2015
Review - Robert Dunt, Founder & CEO ArtTop10 - www.robertdunt.com
