Karin Bubaš
"Karin Bubaš" by Lauren Rosenblum, Fall 2007, pp. 144-46
Karin Bubaš’s most recent solo exhibition features a new photographic series by the Vancouver artist: Studies in Landscape and Wardrobe extends her pursuit of the compositional integration of human form and psychology. The images depict stylishly dressed women in park settings. While some present their backs to the viewer and some are shown in profile, their faces are uniformly turned away or obscured from view. The positioning of the camera thus evokes both a sense of voyeurism and a loss of identity. The women are unaware they are being watched; we never see their features. Drawing inspiration from films of the 1950s and 1960s, Bubaš explores tensions that exist between the female figure, her attire and the surrounding environment.
In Woman on Bench, landscape is suggested by its absence. The composition shows a seated woman facing an enveloping void of immeasurable darkness. The image elicits anxiety and tension—the spotlit figure seems lost in the expansive setting—but brings the viewer toward a recognition of the cinematic codes that the artist has called upon in these compositions. This work references the Italian director Michelangelo Antonioni and the depiction of women in his films.
More code and other directors follow. Pink Dress and Cherry Blossoms features a woman in a frothy pink dress beneath a tree covered with pink blossoms, and alludes to Alfred Hitchcock’s cinematography of voyeurism and suspense. Bubaš acknowledges Hitchcock’s penchant for matching women’s costumes to the surrounding landscape and exposing women as objects of the male gaze. The entire body of work illustrates the critic Laura Mulvey’s theory that the appearance of women in classical Hollywood film is coded so that they may be said to signify “to-be-looked-at-ness.”
This appropriation of cinematographic codes involves the viewer in the process of narrativity. Bubaš’s photographs embody a form of open-ended storytelling that asks the viewer to fill in gaps and interpret context. Since each image is fixed in a state of permanent suspense, between events that have just occurred and those that are about to take place, its narrative must be conjured by the imagination. The coding of a photograph also permits it to tell a story through its various associations. By leaving narrative expectations unfulfilled, the artist encourages viewers to supplement each photograph through their own process of interpretation.
The large prints in Studies in Landscape and Wardrobe are framed, but not enclosed behind the usual pane of glass. The elimination of the physical barrier between work and viewer enhances the intimacy and voyeurism communicated by the images. It is a body of work that envelops and includes the viewer.
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