Mona Kuhn: Kings Road

Description

In Kings Road Mona Kuhn lyrically 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 '30s. For this project Kuhn collaborated with the Department of History of Art and Architecture at UC Santa Barbara, and gained access to Schindler's private archives including blueprints, letters and notes. Alongside reproducing some of these for the first time in this book, Kuhn reinterprets the dichotomy between memory and record in a series of color photos, and solarized gelatin silver prints, a technique favored by the Surrealists. The enigmatic subject of her solarized pictures is a fictional, ethereal figure inspired by a letter from Schindler to a mysterious woman. Kuhn's impressionistic photos render this female presence physical, even as it seems to be dematerializing: fleeting images that question the very nature of photography as record.

Born in Sao Paulo in 1969 and today based in Los Angeles, Mona Kuhn is best known for her large-scale dreamlike photographs of the human form. Her work often references classical themes and is distinguished by the close relationships she develops with her subjects, resulting in images of remarkable naturalness and intimacy, of people naked yet comfortable in their own skin. Kuhn's photographs are held in collections such as the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Her books with Steidl include Photographs (2004), Evidence (2007), Native (2009), Bordeaux Series (2011), Private (2014) and She Disappeared into Complete Silence (2018).

Kuhn fuses nature and architecture together with a ghost-like appearance from an unnamed woman. Kuhn's ability to merge fiction with reality is flawless--Emily Capone "Musee" Pairing moody atmospheric photographs of the house that represent Schindler with solarised portraits of longtime model Viva, Kuhn's work evokes the mystical beauty of true love.--Sara Rosen "AnOther"