Thingness is a key term for thinking about Gereon Krebber’s practice, which references the long tradition of Western and modern sculpture while distorting and perverting it. Deploying a mixture of readily accessible and often completely unconventional materials – for example, porridge oats or mayonnaise – Krebber develops objects that are often both monumental and ephemeral. They frequently relate to their locations in unruly ways: blocking entrances, sprawling over floors, walls and ceilings, and disrespecting boundaries between interiors and exteriors. They are encouraged to morph, distort or disintegrate. Language also features in Krebber’s repertoire of media, becoming another kind of substance available for manipulation, distortion and proliferation.

Krebber is in Oslo for one month leading the residency 'Monumental Temporal'. Join him as he gives a special introduction to his work and calls into question conventional assumptions about public art and culture (for example that it should be permanent, ‘valuable’, or ‘compliant’ or “complementary’ to its location).

Gereon Krebber studied at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf and the Royal College of Art, London, and has exhibited extensively since the early 2000s. His work has featured in solo and group shows in Los Angeles, New York, Berlin, Cologne, Dusseldorf, London and elsewhere, and he has received commissions to develop public work in Bonn, Bochum and Viersen (DE). Awards received include the UK’s Jerwood Sculpture Prize (2003) and the Wilhelm-Lehmbruck-Stipendium (Duisburg, 2009). His working processes probe questions about sculpture as a discipline in relation to site, time, language, communication and the body, and extend across a highly experimental range of media, including writing and speech: for example, via the Laberflash, a new form of performance that he has developed, in which participants’ bodies, voices and thinking processes become unexpected new media for sculptural experimentation.

'Monumental Temporal', is PRAKSIS's eleventh residency, held in collaboration with Fellesverkstedet. For more information on the residency please click here. This talk is organised with Oslo Metropolitan University.

Photograph courtesy of Manfred Förster and Gereon Krebber.