Washington Post Review of Exhibition at Washington Studio School

Thanks to exhibition director Robert Bettmann, curator Mollie Berger Salah, essay author John Anderson, the Washington Studio School, The Krebs Trust, and architect Steven Spurlock for collaborating with us on the recent exhibition.

ICYMI, the review in The Washington Post from August 3, 2018 is below:

KREBS AND GILLIAM
by Mark Jenkins

When D.C. artist Sam Gilliam emerged in the 1960s, he was often grouped stylistically with Washington colorists a decade or more older. But his real peers included two men featured with him in a 1969 show at the Corcoran Gallery, “Gilliam Krebs McGowin.” Two of them are spotlighted in “The Public Artworks of Rockne Krebs & Sam Gilliam, Built and Unbuilt,” a selection of drawings and photos of projects that themselves wouldn’t fit into Washington Studio School’s Kalorama townhouse.

Gilliam’s proposals are for sculptures at locations such as New York’s LaGuardia Airport and a Boston-area transit station. (Both were built.) Krebs, who died in 2011, was a pioneer of large-scale laser installations. He drew and painted a rendering of Boston’s Charles River Basin at night, crisscrossed by a web of green beams. It’s the piece here that is most attractive on its own terms, not just as a likeness of a grand design. Less compelling as an artwork, but a nifty idea, is Krebs’s scheme to embellish a Shreveport, La., bridge with a series of red triangles.

The show is accompanied by an impressive catalogue that documents Gilliam and Krebs’s history of friendship and collaboration, as well as their work for the public realm.

The Public Artworks of Rockne Krebs & Sam Gilliam, Built and Unbuilt Through Aug. 10 at Wash­ington Studio School, 2129 S St. NW.

Read the review on the Washington Post site here.

Some images from the exhibition below: