Candy Land (2018) is an installation made from packaging material pulled from the trash.  It was the culmination of my four-month residency at Recology San Francisco (aka the dump).  

From the press release:

In a large-scale sculptural installation, Beth Krebs explores the lure of the stuff we buy—especially cheap plastic items—and its insidious impact on the environment. Krebs entices viewers with bright colors and appealing forms and textures, creating a wonderland from masses of packaging material, Styrofoam, and components from children’s toys. Abstract still lifes within the installation are suggestive of food or landscapes, but though visually alluring, feel lacking in nourishment. Though playfully absurd, Krebs’ eye candy is also a stomach ache-inducing picture of consumerism run amok.

Spangled (2016) features a video, drawings, an animation, and an interactive sculpture that address questions of patriotism, effort, absurdity, and faith against the odds.

Read the press release for the exhibition.

From the press release:

The exhibition features the video work, Plumb, where a three-dimensional blob stirs and slowly gathers momentum, losing and gaining it in an effort to lift off. A series of sculptures with fleshy folds, titled Low Rise, appear exposed and on display. The neighboring line drawings, Fenced Fatties, present a possible backstory for the sculptures. Slung across the gallery is a pennant flag. Part object and part drawing, it is a gesture of fatigued optimism, which is amplified by the slow plodding of intermittent parade marches.

Krebs writes, “It’s embarrassing to continue to search for breathless enchantment when your ass crack is showing.” And yet To Beat the Band is ultimately a celebration of that impulse. However naïve or doomed, susceptibility to hope is infinitely preferable to a world without it. Krebs’ gestures are presented with humor and some apprehension, but above all with tender regard.

In response to the pending inauguration of the 45th president of the United States, I made this public service announcement. It exists as a short video and a printed poster.

Through openings in the dropped ceiling, a viewer can glimpse a fabricated "sky" in the space above.  Cotton clouds float between sprinkler pipes, a blimp passes by, and animated birds fly on and off of wire conduit.  Pigeons coo, birds tweet, and the high distant sound of a 747 passes overhead.  

Dropped ceiling grid and panels, blue foam, cotton batting, fan, motorized blimp, lights, stop motion animation, monitor, audio

Room is 14' x 24', I hung the dropped ceiling at 9'

Read the catalog essay for the show at Real Artways in Hartford, Connecticut in 2009

2019. Another response to this political moment. Silkscreened books, edition of 8.

Figure/Ground was commissioned by the Buchegger Foundation for the garden of the Architektur Schwaben Museum in Augsburg, Germany in 2012.  I used orange tape to mark a level line through the garden, at approximate eye level for an adult (60" from the ground).  This line could be found regardless of where in the garden a person stood.

Read press for this project here

From a single vantage point in the room, the dots line up and flatten out the space, as in a drawing.  A reversal of the western painting tradition of creating the illusion of depth on a flat surface, my attempt to make a 3-dimensional space appear flat speaks to contemporary constructions of virtual reality.  In the end, the room resisted a complete flattening. 2011.

Ceiling is 16' x 16', hung at 9'.  Made in 2008.

Foop was a video installation made for an office elevator in Brooklyn in 2011.  The mirrored lobby of 25 Washington Street became the site for a possible science fiction plot.  Playing off the motif of the elevator door as a portal to other realms, the installation proposed that this office elevator could take you further than the fourth floor. 

Branch, foam board.  8' x 12' x 5'.  Included in a show of site responsive work at Gallery Ten Eyck (Brooklyn) in 2014.

Facade (2012) was a site specific window installation for 26th street in Chelsea (Manhattan).

read the press release