Beth Krebs

Brooklyn, NY
Residency: October – November 2006

About the Artist
Beth Krebs creates installations that ask the viewer to reconsider the spaces they move through, then imagine what might be possible within and beyond them. Taking cues from a particular site, the projects propose makeshift magic in unlikely places: daylight filters through a gallery’s ventilation grate, revealing a curious passage through the wall and a view of the bus stop outside; or billowing white smoke appears to enter a room through a series of vents in the walls. Krebs received her BA from the College of William and Mary and an MFA from Rutgers University. She has exhibited in galleries and alternative spaces in and around Manhattan and New Orleans, LA, including the Bronx Museum of Art, Smack Mellon gallery in Brooklyn, the Cue Foundation in Chelsea, and the Carroll Gallery at Tulane University. She currently lives in Brooklyn, NY.

Project Description
Utica is home to many vacant buildings, and I spent my time as a resident exploring a few of them. At first I thought I might make a project in one of these spaces, but decided instead to take notice of what was already happening there. I recorded the patterns of light that moved through the empty rooms, and felt like a witness to the private lives of these buildings. Later I used the video of the light patterns to create unexpected openings in ordinary, less idiosyncratic, spaces. In one, a tiny interior window (4”x 6”) frames paper leaves blown by a fan. The leaves mimic the much larger moving shadow shapes projected on the wall perpendicular to it. This arrangement of the small window and the video projection suggests that the moving light patterns are coming from the small window. In another piece, the silhouette of a window whose shape and intensity gradually shift, is projected into a wall drawing of an interior, animating it.