Excerpt from Ribbon of Darkness: Inferencing from the Shadowy Arts and Sciences

Sarah Krepp’s transfigured ensembles, composed of slashed, abraded tire treads- harvested from a crash-littered DMV graveyard in Chicago- have a raw visceral appeal. Her explosive reliefs evoke a violent J. G. Ballard galaxy redolent of cataclysmic car collisions, shapes plowed together, saberlike jets of gas, smeared and obliterated color. The visual impact of destruction and resurrection, of tattered and tangled materials is so powerful that she makes us see familiar flora and fauna in anew and forbidding light. Consider her mortuary feathers, Beaudelairean flayed flowers of evil, abstract shooting-star sprays, and rubbery quilled shrouds cascading into space. Provocatively textured and arrestingly pitch-black, these slivered high-relief draperies forecast a techno-craft fashion that is literally cutting-edge.

Barbara Maria Stafford, Professor Emerita, Art History, University of Chicago