Krebs has
been making these pieces on marble tiles since March, and they represent a
departure from the paintings and freestanding sculptures he has created in the
past. He begins the process with drawings from life that range in size from
eight inches to eight feet. Then he crops out parts of the drawing to emphasize
particular aspects of the image, as, for instance, in the intimate pair of
hands that clasp each other from a pair of extended arms in Half Full,Half
Empty. The next
step is to transfer the drawing to a marble slab and carve out the image in
relief. The drawing on marble takes about three weeks to produce.
Krebs
varies the texture of the marble when he works on a carving. Relief II
style=’font-size:8.0pt;font-family:Verdana’> is the only work on display that
isn’t mounted on one of the gallery walls, allowing the viewer to examine the
hunk of marble from which the relief was carved. The sculpture depicts a girl
crying, while an older woman, presumably her mother, bends over and comforts
her child. The girl’s gaping, half-open mouth forms the visual focus of the
piece, and the texture changes across surface of the sculpture, with the flesh
of the figures smoothed out while the surrounding marble is worked into
patterns.
Representing
the concept of conflict is “Innocenti,” which depicts a male figure who wears a
military helmet while he brandishes a staff in his hand. Krebs says the work
was inspired by an Italian altarpiece. His sculptures don’t draw exclusively on
Renaissance inspiration, though. He was also inspired by the murals and wall
sculptures in Rockefeller Center, and he points to his childhood growing up in
Washington, DC, where many of the public monuments and government buildings
sport bas relief carvings and similar architectural adornments.
There is
also a classical influence in Krebs’ work, as in his sculpture “Daphne,” which
emphasizes the breast, arm, and hair of the mythical heroine pursued by Apollo.
The god of the sun plays a role in the relief by way of the rays of sunlight
that radiate from the delicately sculpted features of the female figure. Literary
allusions are apparent also in Krebs’ sculpture “Gulliver,” which shows
Jonathan Swift’s hero as he lies bound by the Lilliputians. Krebs’ technique of
cropping the figure emphasizes the twisted knees and flexed arms of the prone
male figure.
Krebs
likes to play with the light effects in his sculptures by carving them in a way
to emphasize the spaces and vortexes within the marble. He varies the texture
of the marble, leaving some areas more highly polished than others and
experiments with ways of accentuating or masking the grain in the original
marble slabs. Krebs carves sensuous curves to indicate the flow of a rounded
breast, outstretched arms and fingers, and languid, drooping eyes. The figures
are incomplete, and viewers are left to finish the body in their imaginations,
filling in the blank spaces in the marble and outside it for themselves. In
effect, they collaborate in the fabrication of the sculpture by distinguishing
the body features that fill the surface of the slab, and they are free to finish
the picture beyond the edges in their own minds. |
