Horizon

Bubi Canal, a Spanish-American artist in New York, blends photography and sculpture to construct vibrant worlds. Characters, influenced by pop culture and mythology, inhabit his scenes, reflecting his life like a journal.

The word ‘horizon’ comes from the Latin horĭzon and refers to the visual boundary of the earth’s surface, a place or landscape, and to the set of possibilities offered in a scenario. The word ‘horizon’ has a universal resonance and can evoke the idea of looking ahead and exploring the unknown. The horizon appears in most of Bubi Canal’s images as a physical space in which stories unfold, but also as a symbolic space of individual freedom through which to generate a personal worldview.

His scenes, in the manner of portraits or still lifes, are often inhabited by dreamlike beings or objects that belong to realities where playfulness and spontaneity are very much present. The solemn protagonists of his images, in most cases, are close to Bubi’s daily life and become participants in a shared universe. David Le Breton noted in his book Sociology of the body that “Existence is, in the first place, bodily” and that “Through their corporeality, each person makes the world the measure of their experience, transforming it into a familiar and coherent structure…” The characters, objects, and costumes that appear in Bubi’s photographs transport us to an apparently “childlike” world, as it is in childhood that we shape a large part of the identity that will accompany us into adulthood. Therefore, it is not strange that Bubi’s images make us relive the moment when we were children and, in some way, vindicate the dynamics of play as necessary in all moments of existence.

Bubi’s universe is influenced by the imaginarium of Walt Disney, the design and use of Bauhaus colors, Japanese culture, fashion, and the combination of the contemporary and the traditional. All this gives his images a timeless and mysterious character capable of activating our imagination and inventing stories and worlds. Let us choose one or several horizons, let us be carried away, let us move through space, let us play, let us create our meanings, let us contribute our experiences, let us be free.

— Carmen Quijano