Beth Krebs “Spangled”

Station Independent Projects

[Image: Beth Krebs, Spangled @ Station Independent Projects, NYC]

This event has ended.

Station Independent Projects present Spangled, Beth Krebs’s second solo show with the gallery.

The exhibition features Anthem, a motivational video set to a faltering marching band arrangement of “Don’t Stop Believin’ “(the 1981 rock song by the band Journey). Krebs accompanies the band on clarinet, having relearned to play her childhood instrument with this song as her goal. Coordinated with the sound is a flag twirling routine that quickly moves from the field to the stratosphere in progressively more fanciful, campy scenarios. The dropped flags and gasping instrumentals are evidence of the effort required for “believin’.”

Don’t stop believin’
Hold on to that feelin’
Streetlight, people

Also on view is an animated line drawing, titled Come On Down!. A string of pennant flags flutters, periodically coming together like a line of showgirls to move in time to the theme song of The Price Is Right. As it loops and loops, the enthusiastic promise of this upbeat tune begins to wear.

With Spangled, Krebs returns to themes of effort, absurdity, and faith. The work was motivated in part by her own wavering optimism as she enters middle age, as another constantly distracted consumer in a country marked by growing inequality. Her wacky cheer is tempered by an acknowledgement of the real challenges that stand in the way of genuine hope. This work is an invitation to risk embarrassment and work for connection wherever it can be found.

Krebs’s work has been exhibited in New York, San Francisco and abroad, at venues including the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM), Smack Mellon, Storefront Ten Eyck, Mixed Greens, Real Artways, the Cue Foundation, the Bronx Museum and Minnesota Street Projects. She is the recipient of a grant from the Buchegger Foundation to fund an installation in Germany, and an MFA grant from the Joan Mitchell Foundation. Krebs recently left Brooklyn for the west coast, and misses New Yorkers’ candor but is enjoying the strawberries. She would like to thank the Virginia Center for Creative Arts (VCCA) and the Willapa Bay Artist Residency for their generous gifts of time and space that made the development of this work possible.