The gallery alexander levy is pleased to present new mobiles and mirror works of the sculptor Gereon Krebber (*1973, lives in Cologne). Tagundnachtgleiche is Krebber’s second solo exhibition in the gallery alexander levy.

The artist is showing four large-format mobiles. Weights hang on aluminum rods, as well as a large oval mirror on each, the mirrored coatings of which have been partially removed. The mirror appears strangely cloudy; half reflective, half transparent-clear and diaphanous. On the back, the two layers of paint that protect the silver from tarnishing have been irregularly sanded. This makes the levels even more enigmatic. What one is actually seeing, what is where, whether in front or behind, whether figure or background, reflection or a look through, is difficult to register. It is a game of deception, which literally creates the space behind the mirror and obscures it.

One small movement, a gentle gust of air, is enough to set the mirrors in motion and moving past one another. Broken pavement slabs, sanded rubber blocks and bronze casts serve as counterweights. Half organic and half crystalline in form, they seem like jaggedly hardened drops. Stones and mirrors, soap, concrete, rubber and bronze: the materials offer contrasts of solid and brittle, soft and hard. Together they result in a bizarre roundel that revolves around itself in its own orbits and with its own interdependencies.

The mobiles are flanked by two steles, each of which consists of four mirrors with partially removed silver layers. Front and back overlap in the view through. The simply defined interior is inaccessible, but can be viewed. The two steles are mirror-symmetrical in form. When the blemish drawing varies even slightly, the Doppelgänger seem like their own mirror reflection.

The theme of mobiles has already occupied Gereon Krebber since 2009. In his first series, Let the pigs pay, dried pig’s feet and ears balance on fine metal rods. This was followed by series like Lost in Limboland (2013) and All the ifs and whens (2013). His to date most sophisticated mobile, Aurelio (2014), in the new building of the Sparkasse KölnBonn by Ortner&Ortner, consists of two seesaws with a considerable total weight of 370 kg. With bronzes, ground mirrors and concrete, these are the direct predecessors to Tagundnachtgleiche. The title also refers to the equal lengths of day and night on 20 March as a kind of planetary equilibrium of two opposing spans of time that occur twice each year.

The mobiles illustrate the ideal of balance and hang tared in equilibrium. However, they unsettle in their latency and threaten with instability. The exhibition enquires about the conflict between floating and heaviness, circuits and weighting, material and reflection, between presence and appearance. It is a quiet choreography of the mirrors and their counterweights, a game of chimera and substrates.

Gereon Krebber was recently represented with his mobiles in the overview exhibition Responses to Calder – Mobiles in contemporary art in the Kunsthalle Wilhelmshaven. Upcoming solo exhibitions, for example, are Soften them up, 2015, Cindy Rucker Gallery, New York; Antiköper/OTC, 2016 in the Museum Folkwang Essen and Antagomorph, 2016, in the Museum DKM Duisburg, Germany.