MONA KUHN: Between Modernism & Surrealism | Edwynn Houk Gallery

 

Spectral, 2021© Mona Kuhn
Solarized gelatin silver enlargement print

 

Interleaving, 2022 © Mona Kuhn

Solarized gelatin silver print

Portrait Revealed, 2021 © Mona Kuhn

Solarized gelatin silver enlargement print

 

Photographer Mona Kuhn and Darius Himes, International Head of Photographs at Christie’s 

Photographer Mona Kuhn and Darius Himes, International Head of Photographs at Christie’s discuss her series along with artworks by masters exploring surreal representation.

“Mona Kuhn: Between Modernism and Surrealism” 

An exhibition of seven solarized photographs by Mona Kuhn from her series Kings Road in dialogue with artworks by masters exploring surreal representation, including Man Ray, Láslzó Moholy-Nagy, Dora Maar, Erwin Blumenfeld, and Bill Brandt.  +  +  +  

Mona Kuhn’s portraits visualize an uncanny love story. Kuhn’s solarized photographs in this exhibition follow a young woman throughout the groundbreaking mid-century modernist home designed by architect Rudolph Schindler in West Hollywood. In this mysterious narrative, Kuhn explores the core themes of Surrealism — dreams, desire, creation, and a challenge to conventional modes — through this autonomous woman. An active subject, she seeks formal and spiritual union with the King’s Road House, an avant-garde center of its day and a symbol of community and creativity. Kuhn’s solarization pushes these scenes further into the otherworldly, dissolving the aesthetic distinction between the human body, and its presence within the building. Rendered in layers of oxidized silver, body parts and architectural elements mirror and dissolve into each other, and the woman’s silver shadow cast on the building creates a literal space of integration.

The breakthrough of Surreal explorations in photography are widely traced to Man Ray’s experimentations, which radically expanded the horizons of photography beyond straight representation. This show presents two of the artist’s solarized gelatin silver prints, a technique that he discovered with Lee Miller in 1931: a nude portrait of Meret Oppenheim posing in front of Salvador Dalí’s painting, printed on a carte-postale, as well as a portrait. Both the figure of the mysterious woman and architecture were key motifs used by Surrealists and artists influenced by the movement, and photographs by László Moholy-Nagy, Dora Maar, Erwin Blumenfeld, and Bill Brandt open a historical dialogue with Kuhn’s practice.

“Mona Kuhn: Between Modernism and Surrealism” 

Edwynn Houk Gallery, 745 Fifth Ave NY 

through May 11, 2024

 

Mona Kuhn: Kings Road, Published by Steidl

Mona Kuhn’s lyrical and formally daring portrait of the iconic Schindler House in Los Angeles, supplemented with letters, blueprints and more. In Kings Road, Californian photographer Mona Kuhn (born 1969) reconsiders the realms of time and space within the architectural elements of the Schindler House in Los Angeles. Built by Austrian architect Rudolph M. Schindler in 1922, the house was both a social and design experiment and an avant-garde hub for intellectuals and artists in the 1920s and 1930s.