Magnolia Tapestry Project

Fort Collins Musuem of Contemporary Art

Comments (0) By Michael Paglia Thursday, Jun 26 2008

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Krebs is a nationally known painter who lives in the San Francisco Bay area. She received an MFA in 1976 from the prestigious Claremont Graduate School and is a past recipient of grants from the Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation and the Pollock-Krasner Foundation. Her work has been collected by a number of museums, mostly in California, notably the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

The show at Sandy Carson is something of a retrospective featuring works done between the 1980s and 2000, but there is one recent painting as well. Despite the many older works — especially from the early '90s — the show wasn't installed chronologically, so it's hard to discern the artist's stylistic development. It's also difficult because Krebs has been so consistent over her career. All of the pieces here are chastely conceived and simply executed, and it's hard to distinguish between her earliest paintings — those from the early-'80s "Scroll" series — and the newest, from this year's "Hibernation" series.

"Reclining Youth," by Leon Golub, digitized Jacquard weaving.

"Untitled (Interlocking series)," by Patsy Krebs, acrylic on canvas.

Details

Through August 8, Fort Collins Museum of Contemporary Art, 201 South College Avenue, Fort Collins, 1-970-482-2787, www.fcmoca.org.Through July 12, Sandy Carson Gallery, 760 Santa Fe Drive, 303-573-8585, www.sandycarsongallery.com.For a complete slide show of these exhibits, go to slideshow.westword.com.

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Although Krebs uses straight edges and flat surfaces like the doctrinaire minimalists, you could call her a post-minimalist, because her compositions are fairly complicated. She also creates diminutive, easel-sized paintings along with large-scale works, which is distinct from the classic minimalist approach as well.

Many of Krebs's paintings would be difficult to reproduce, as she sometimes uses colors that barely differ from one another or have the same depth of shading or identical values. Others, though, include clear distinctions between the different shades, as in "Untitled (Interlocking series)," in which she uses the tried-and-true combination of black, white and gray. There's something precious about this painting — and I don't use the word as a pejorative, but rather as a compliment and an acknowledgement that this piece literally glows under the gallery lights like some precious gem.

Krebs is not as well known here as she is on the West Coast, but take my word for it, her solo at Sandy Carson is an absolute must-see for anyone into contemporary painting. Not only that, but Santa Fe Drive is a lot closer to home than Fort Collins.