LAURA KRIFKA Between You and Me
Between You and Me is Laura Krifka's second exhibition at BravinLee. Krifka dissects the way power and identity is constructed in visual culture. She is interested in how the language of art history has blended with film and photography, dissolving distinctions between high and low and making visual factuality tenuous. Compositions are collapsed down to flat spaces, and single figures assert their gaze out of environments constructed with patterned wallpaper and fabrics. There is a sense of privacy and intimacy in their surroundings, but these spaces are anonymous in nature, like a found photo in a gutter that reveals too much and also not enough to be truly informative. By limiting the amount of information in each painting Krifka hopes to create a precarious point of departure for the viewer. Our own gaze becomes a major component in reading each piece, drawing attention to our own personal systems of coding.
While the medium of painting is associated with high-value artifice (being labor-intensive and replete with intention), Krifka seeks to compel the viewer into initially believing the ‘truthfulness’ of her depictions by utilizing a refined naturalism. On sustained viewing, she hopes that credibility disassembles as subtle distortions of structure and impossible/contrived light and space reveal themselves. Ultimately, this loss of the image’s authority alludes to the ways that our pleasures and perversions have been molded by the fictions that permeate our ubiquitous visual culture. That our most secret desires are partially formed by our codified, collective experiences is a source of endless fascination for her.
Laura Krifka has exhibited in Los Angeles at LA Louver, Charlie James, CB1 and the Westmont Ridley-Tree Museum of Art in Santa Barbara among others.