South #1 1973

Curator: Here we have Rockne Krebs's "South #1," created in 1973. It's a fascinating pencil drawing that seems to straddle the line between a conceptual sketch and a site-specific proposal. Editor: My immediate impression is one of ethereal lightness, a pastel geometry emerging from the page. It feels like a blueprint for an unbuilt cathedral of light. Curator: I find the annotations and small diagrams around the central image particularly compelling. They reveal Krebs’s thought process— the labor and planning that go into manifesting ephemeral art. It hints at the intersection between light, space and the architectural elements necessary to build these ephemeral constructions. Editor: And consider the use of rainbow colors for those light beams! The rainbow, so often a symbol of hope, promise, even divine presence after the storm. To see them rendered in this calculated fashion… Curator: It emphasizes, for me, how a potentially uncontrolled element – light - is tamed via architectural means and engineering solutions. Krebs seemed intensely focused on how manufactured environments and technological control enable the production and observation of beauty. Editor: I think more about those small sketches too: the implied arches, the almost liturgical quality of light filtering through the window designs… Krebs’s intention seemingly revolves around transcendence; something he's perhaps trying to convey using light's symbolic power. Curator: His process really foregrounds, what could be, a demystified artistic output, highlighting his hands-on technical involvement through labor as fundamental. Editor: Ultimately, both elements—the artistic drive for spiritual resonance and the deliberate breakdown of that process via methodical annotations—are there. Krebs seems to seek meaning in a delicate balance. Curator: I come away understanding, in deeper terms, not only Krebs’s process but the means by which many artistic experiments were realized. Editor: I’m left with this resonating image in my mind, this idea of a future, hopeful, light, born through calculated planning, like some form of divine calculation.