Cara Krebb’s Sehnsucht: Portals to the Unattainable
I spent my childhood in a modest white house in northern Germany. I loved my home. I loved the gleaming stone floor. I loved the curving staircase, adorned with decorative wrought iron. I loved the narrow hallways. Best of all was the attic. It was accessed by a small sliding door tucked behind a large wardrobe. It was my secret place. It was my own world full of wonder and excitement.
Fifteen years later, I was riding a train to Salt Lake City reminiscing about the trains I used to take through Europe. For a moment my home wasn’t so distant. I longed. I ached. I hoped for that place again. Sadly, I realized even if I were to return, even if I were to prance across that polished stone floor, climb the twisted stairs, and open the sliding door once more, the attic wouldn’t be the same. That place was partially the physical locale, but mostly the imaginings of an seven-year-old girl. That state of naivety of youth and wonder at the mundane could never be reclaimed, yet I still ached for it.
There is a word that Germans use for this immense desire for the unreachable or “the inconsolable longing in the human heart for we know not what; a yearning for a far, familiar, non-earthly, intangible land one can identify as one’s home.” Sehnsucht.
That beautiful familiar word from my German home greeted me as I walked into an exhibit at the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art. It was the title of an exhibit located in a far corner of the museum. The entrance was only discernable from a certain vantage point. I felt like I was once again creeping around the corner and entering into my attic to fulfill a childlike instinct to explore. As I crossed the threshold, I entered a new world created by Cara Krebbs.
The space was filled with white noise and an overtone of delicate tinkling glass. It echoed off the white walls of the small rectangular enclosure. The soft rhythmic soundscape receded as it dissipated into familiarity. Welcoming its visitors to the intimate space was an array of tropical ocean blue gelatin. Made from circular molds, they were each unique in form and displayed on a scaffolding of ornate silver stands.
On the walls of the gallery were what seemed to be large dabs of amorphous slimy gloop. It felt as if they were moving and undulating, although the paint and glass they were made from were undeniably rigid. These frozen amebas inhabited the realm somewhere between painting and sculpture. They were wall mounted, evoking the conventions of traditional painting, yet extended into the viewer's space anywhere from two to six inches: growing and receding into hills and valleys of a transparent landscape. The glass encapsulated a painted paradisiacal world. Shadows and impressions of palm trees, clear waters, tropical fish, and lush forests were illuminated and at the same time morphed by the refraction of light through curved glass.
On the far side of the exhibit, was an intimate closet-like space. Above was found the source of the rhythmic tinkling: a clever apparatus erected to shine light through moving water. The result: twisted and bended light made the walls move. In the center of the space, a large square flat pedestal laid on the floor. The scale of the pedestal was uncomfortably large for the space and dwarfed a small clear balloon resembling a pool-floatie. Lulling waves of light glistened across the plastic and illuminated a landscape printed on the backside. As quickly as the excitement and wonder of this new world came, it left and was replaced with immense sorrow as I realized I could never reach that destination, in the same way I could never return to the idealized attic of my german home.
Krebb’s pieces are portals. Just as the train careening down its tracks had the capacity to carry me from one space to another, miles and miles apart, the transparent artifacts of this exhibit are another form of transportation. Like Lewis Carroll's Looking Glass, they reveal a mystical unexplored world. Lewis Carroll’s portal to another world may also be referenced by the sweets arranged on silver platters; they recall Alice’s encounter with goodies labeled “eat me” and “drink me”. However, Krebb’s portals, instead of depositing you at your destination, force you to stay boarded on the train. The viewer remains somewhere between worlds, frozen in limbo. A sense of suspended time is also created by the soundscape’s repetitive nature. The music never moves forward or backward, but remains in the same place like a broken record.
Welcoming invitations followed by boundaries are patterns are found throughout Krebb’s exhibit. This is first exemplified by the pristine aqua jellos. They were presented with so much care and decadence, as if to welcome a guest. The viewer is enticed by the jewel-like gleaming mounds of gelatine. The boundary presents itself in the form of context; because of the gelatines location within an exhibit, the viewer knows it is art, and thereby not meant to be touched or consumed. The glass amorphous paintings are also very enticing. Their transparent nature invites the viewer to look and search for what lies within. The elusiveness of the medium is also an invitation to touch or even squeeze to discover its true material properties. There is a desire to touch, yet it cannot be touched because of museum etiquette and the physical boundary of rigid glass. What looks like it must give like putty would not acquiesce. These boundaries are essential because they contribute to the sense of sehnsucht Krebb is trying to portray. The viewer cannot be permitted to enter the ideal imagined space because it would destroy the sense of longing. One does not miss or long for something they have complete access too.
Lastly, fluidity and transience are prevalent in this exhibit. The illusion of movement found in refracted light and the amorphous forms of Krebb’s paintings are a reminder of the slippery nature of memory and imagination. They describe the difficulty of grasping at a dreamland memory as it dribbles and dissipates like water through cupped fingers. The transparent materials, aqua colors, refracted light through water and glass, and subject of many of the landscapes make allusions to the ocean: mysterious, unexplored, and in constant motion. Fluidity is also presented in the form of art pieces that bridge the borders between painting and sculpture, the everyday mundane and art, and reality and imagination.
Krebb’s exhibit, has the tremendous ability to take one through the full range of the word sehnsucht. Like an opera, it guides you through a myriad of emotion, all the while telling a singular dramatic story. One feels excitement and awe as they witness the wonderful places that Krebb’s portals reveal to us. This is followed by a tremendous load of longing, or missing. Then finally sorrow, upon realizing these utopias are out of reach and unattainable. Although sehnsucht has no comparable english translation, it is through Krebb’s exhibit that one can come to an understanding of the word that transcends speech.
