Exhibitions

Happy Friday Night

KARIN BUBAS
July 3–July 31, 1999

In Happy Friday Night, Karin Bubas’ photographic depiction of a recent trip to Japan investigates the neglected sites of a city. Whether you have been to Japan or not, most everyone is aware that this site is teeming with people and adheres to strict behavioural protocol. Bubas’ carefully chosen subject matter is the common site; the place that is usually passed over without remark. As in her previous work, her images consitently remain devoid of people; empty, yet charged. The viewer enters into her world, becoming the voyeur, filling in the blanks of what must have been or what might occur

An under ground subway station, a street sign, a food cooler, the unkempt bedroom of a twenty-something “girl” are all her subjects. The titles of the works, Two Chairs and an Ashtray, Green Trees, Cloud Lockers and Plastic Food Menu are equally banal, becoming the signifiers that encode the images and echo the sociological reading of the work. Viewed in the context of this exhibition, Bubas’ photographs are far from being commonplace.
—Susan Edelstein