Cara Krebs: Sehnsucht

Sehnsucht: “the inconsolable longing in the human heart for we know not what”; a yearning for a far, familiar, non-earthly land one can identify as one’s home

Paradoxical worlds hover in thresholds. Many exquisite experiences exist only in spaces of potential—the fantasy of imagining the action of touch, an embellished conceptualization of an exotic location, magic without learning its mechanism. Cara Krebs toys with displacement by conceiving imagination, perception, desire, and visceral reactions as means of moving a person through place. In the same manner that paintings traditionally function as illusionistic portals, translucent material allows viewers to visually pass into spaces physically impossible to inhabit. Uncanny, often bodily objects and materials such as Jell-O skins move a person into locations both alien and sweetly familiar. Material suggests how one could engage these fantasies. Exotic imagery of computer desktop wallpapers appears to be tactile, and transient, useless stuff such as discarded containers becomes beautiful, lasting objects desirable to possess.

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website