Rockne Krebs

Rockne Krebs (b. 1938, Kansas City, MO; d. 2011, Washington, DC) received his BFA in Sculpture from the University of Kansas. He served in the Navy and moved to Washington. Once in DC, he was inspired by the stripes of Gene Davis, and the chevrons of Kenneth Noland. His first exhibitions at the Jefferson Place were of sculptures of plexiglass. In early 1969 he exhibited a sculpture of light, composed of a single laser beam, bouncing through the gallery of several strategically paced mirrors: a “Cat’s Cradle.” That first installation made him the father of laser art, “Sculpture Minus Object.”

In 1969 he partnered with Hewlett-Packard through an arrangement in the Art and Technology program at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. In 1970 his work was included in the World’s Fair in Osaka, Japan. In 1980 he created “The Source,” which shot parallel laser beams of argon and krypton from the Lincoln Memorial, across the Mall, where the beams split: directing one over the White House up 16th Street, and the other continued over the Capitol. His work received awards from the National Endowment for the Arts in 1970, and a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship in 1972.

Solo Exhibitions
1968—Sculpture, Feb. 10—March 8
1969—Energy Structures, Feb. 18—March 8
1971—March 30–April 17
1973—Sculpture, Sept. 28—Oct. 13

Group Exhibitions
1968—Jefferson Place Ten Years, July 16–Aug. 7
1973—New Work, Sept. 6–22

http://www.rocknekrebsart.com/

Rockne Krebs with "Sculpture Minus Object," 1968
Image courtesy © Estate of Rockne Krebs

Untitled by Rockne Krebs, 1968, Installation view at Jefferson Place Gallery
(C)Estate of Rockne Krebs/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY [ #28 ]

Home on the Range, 1973, Rockne Krebs, installation view at Jefferson Place Gallery
(C)Estate of Rockne Krebs/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY [ #29 ]

Announcement flier for Rockne Krebs "365 Drawings" at Jefferson Place Gallery
Jefferson Place Gallery Art & Artist File, Smithsonian American Art Museum/National Portrait Gallery Library, Smithsonian Libraries, Washington D.C., Consulted July 2017, Photo by Robert Bettmann [ #81 ]

Sam Gilliam and Rockne Krebs by Carol Harrison
Photo © Carol Harrison [ #52 ]

Announcement card for Rockne Krebs at Jefferson Place Gallery
Jefferson Place Gallery Art & Artist File, Smithsonian American Art Museum/National Portrait Gallery Library, Smithsonian Libraries, Washington D.C., Consulted July 2017, Photo by Robert Bettmann [ #84 ]

Announcement flier for Rockne Krebs "Sculpture" at Jefferson Place Gallery
Jefferson Place Gallery Art & Artist File, Smithsonian American Art Museum/National Portrait Gallery Library, Smithsonian Libraries, Washington D.C., Consulted July 2017, Photo by Robert Bettmann

Announcement card for Rockne Krebs "Sculpture" at Jefferson Place Gallery
Jefferson Place Gallery Art & Artist File, Smithsonian American Art Museum/National Portrait Gallery Library, Smithsonian Libraries, Washington D.C., Consulted July 2017, Photo by Robert Bettmann [ #83 ]

Installation view of Rockne Krebs solo show at Jefferson Place Gallery 365 Drawings, 1973
(C)Estate of Rockne Krebs/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY [ #51 ]

Installation view of Rockne Krebs solo show at Jefferson Place Gallery 365 Drawings, 1973
(C)Estate of Rockne Krebs/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY [ #50 ]

Installation view of Rockne Krebs solo show at Jefferson Place Gallery 365 Drawings, 1973
(C)Estate of Rockne Krebs/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY [ #47 ]

Installation view of Rockne Krebs solo show at Jefferson Place Gallery 365 Drawings, 1973
(C)Estate of Rockne Krebs/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY [ #46 ]

Installation view of Rockne Krebs solo show at Jefferson Place Gallery 365 Drawings, 1973
(C)Estate of Rockne Krebs/Licensed by VAGA, New York, NY [ #45 ]

connected archival press clips

Restraint Enhances Young Washington Artist’s Sculptures

April 19, 2024

Paul Richard

The Washington Post

The newly expanded and redecorated Jefferson Place Gallery, 2144 P St. NW, is showing new plexiglass and aluminum sculptures by Rockne Krebs, a 29-year-old Washington artist. It's an impressive show. At it's best, Krebs' work exhibits an intensity and restraint that is rare indeed.

Between 2-D and 3-D

April 19, 2024

Paul Richard

The Washington Post

This show is full of drawings, and not just five or 10 or 30. There are 365 drawings here, all made with candle flame and smoke, hanging floor to ceiling, on a dozen walls.

Art: Jefferson Place

April 19, 2024

Frank Geitlein and Benjamin Forgey

The Sunday Star

Krebs talks of the viewer being "compelled to locate it (the object) and to define for himself the space it occupies." This is definition of sculpture at a highly distilled level and this piece is a brilliant success in terms of its theory.

Between 2-D and 3-D

April 19, 2024

Paul Richard

The Washington Post

Krebs' work has always been so clean, his geometry so pure; but "Home" is not austere, it's raggedy and funny. It is not made of laser beams, nor of sunlight, nor of polished plastic, those familiar Krebsian materials. It is made, instead, of an ancient windmill, wires, balls of steel wool, cotton, and bits of transparent colored Plexiglass.

Between 2-D and 3-D

April 19, 2024

Paul Richard

The Washington Post

Having studied it for years, with increasing admiration, I thought I understood the art of Rockne Krebs. Then I saw his newest piece. It's call "Home on the Range." It will be on view through Oct. 13 in the third-floor gallery of the Jefferson Place, 2000 P St. NW, and it's like nothing you have ever seen.

Nesta Dorrance and the Jefferson Place Gallery

April 19, 2024

Jean Lawlor

The Washington Post

Krebs is interested in new materials and processes rather than the traditional media of metal and stone. He would like to make structures for the air.

Sculptor Takes Panes

April 19, 2024

Tom Harney

The Washington Daily News

Rockne Krebs says he didn't excel in geometry in school, but in his new show of sculpture at Jefferson Place he more than makes up for those early marks... A person who studies them admires the fragile beauty of the plastic, and the way their edges hod light in some places like a vessel and at other places break it down into prisms of color.

Restraint Enhances Young Washington Artist’s Sculptures

April 19, 2024

Paul Richard

The Washington Post

The viewer can look both at them and through them; he can study the reflections and transparencies of the plastic and of the peculiarly dematerialized square-section aluminum channels, each of which carries strips of light-reflecting tape; he is always conscious of space, of the space the sculptures occupy and of the rooms they seem to pierce; but all of his personal discoveries, or observations, or musings, take place in the presence of objects as immediately apprehensible as a pyramid or a cube. Their deceptive simplicity is the greatest virtue of these works. There is nothing arty or fussy about them... It is this simplicity, rather than the shifting richness that swirl about it, that persists in the viewer's memory.

Restraint Enhances Young Washington Artist’s Sculptures

April 19, 2024

Paul Richard

The Washington Post

Much contemporary sculpture suffers from mindless elaboration, from a costume-jewelry fussiness that obscures and dissolves whatever might have been the artist's original intention.

The Light Touch

April 19, 2024

Paul Richard

The Washington Post

Washington sculptor Rockne Krebs has had three shows at the Jefferson Place Gallery here. During the first two he sold only a single work - to Nesta Dorrance, the Gallery's owner.