Spectral, 2021© Mona Kuhn
Solarized gelatin silver enlargement print
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.
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.
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