The light and forms of Joshua Tree National Park inspire a turn toward abstraction for the famed photographer
Acclaimed for her intimate nudes, Mona Kuhn takes a new direction into abstraction in her latest series. Photographed at a golden modernist structure on the edge of Joshua Tree National Park, architectural lines, light reflections and a single figure have been carefully balanced against the backdrop of the Californian desert.
The human figure in these images--Kuhn’s friend and collaborator Jacintha--emerges like a surrealist mirage, fragmented and indistinct, at times submerged in shadows or overexposed. The building’s facades of glass and mirrors serve as optical planes, an extension of the artist’s camera and lens. Light is split into refracting colors, desert vegetation grows sideways, inside is outside and outside in. Kuhn pushes a certain disorienting effect by introducing metallic foils as an additional surface, at times producing purely abstract results. The work marks Kuhn’s increasing use of techniques that appear to merge the figure, abstraction and landscape into one.
Mona Kuhn (born 1969) is best known for her large-scale, dreamlike photographs of the human form. Her pictures often reference classical themes with a light and insightful touch. Kuhn’s approach to her work is distinguished by the close relationships she develops with her subjects, resulting in images of remarkable naturalness and intimacy. Born in São Paulo, Brazil, Kuhn lives and works in Los Angeles.
Featured image is reproduced from 'Mona Kuhn: She Disappeared into Complete Silence.'
PRAISE AND REVIEWS
British Journal of Photography
Marigold Warner
She Disappeared Into Complete Silence is an experimental project shot in Acido Dorado, a reflective house in the middle of the Californian desert designed by American architect Robert Stone. Inside it are mirrored ceilings and walls, which refract sheets of golden desert light that flood the house. Here, Kuhn presents a solitary nude on the edge of the desert, removed from any symbols of time, creating “an abstraction of being,” and “a space where our mind resides”.
C Magazine
Marie Look
Contemporary photographer Mona Kuhn introduces her latest series, the abstract-slanting She Disappeared Into Complete Silence, in which modern architectural lines and the human form mingle against the California desert background.
Wallpaper
Charlotte Jansen
Timeless and trippy, the photographs are testimony to the unique effects of the desert environment – a place for deep enquiry and to ruminate on the essence of being human.
Musee
Amy Schatz
Kuhn’s She Disappeared into Complete Silence proves the artist is a maestra with the lens and a sorceress in the desert; she shrinks Jacintha into glittering nothingness, a mere memory of the female form.
Aesthetica
In a new publication from Steidl, She Disappeared into Complete Silence, the practitioner takes fresh steps into abstraction. Set against a backdrop of the expansive Californian desert, it taps into our relationship with the environment – connecting interior and exterior worlds through layering and refraction.
Feature Shoot
Miss Rosen
In She Disappeared into Complete Silence (Steidl), Kuhn takes Paul Nash’s Landscape from a Dream (1936-38) as her departure point and delves into the realm of photography to explore the surreal, symbolic realm of the California desert landscape, her model Jacintha, and elements of architecture to organize chaos.
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Enigmatic and poetic, Mona Kuhn's new photography book, She Disappeared into Complete Silence, "forces the gaze to wander from one image to another, to imagine a story so that we may comprehend them," Salvador Nadales writes. "The work’s personal universe gives rise to situations in which the body in all its integrity, the raw landscape, and the most essential abstraction appear within complete silence, and convey to us absolute truths. But this truth flirts with the imagination and asks the viewer to supply the narrative. We could characterize this as a space of germination where enigmatic signs take seed and the harmonic hybridization of the elements give rise to an evocative tale. The essence of Mona Kuhn’s work reveals her concerns as an artist working in the transcendental dimension, the atemporal plane, and from a knowledge of human nature and how people relate to themselves, to others, and to the outside world. She achieves all this in a way that is consistent with her approach to photography, which, more than telling stories, allows you to imagine them." continue to blog
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FORMAT: Hbk, 11.75 x 12.25 in. / 96 pgs / 60 color & b&w. LIST PRICE: U.S. $50.00 LIST PRICE: CANADA $69.95 ISBN: 9783958291805 PUBLISHER: Steidl AVAILABLE: 1/22/2019 DISTRIBUTION: D.A.P. RETAILER DISC: TRADE PUBLISHING STATUS: Active AVAILABILITY: In stock TERRITORY: NA ONLY
The light and forms of Joshua Tree National Park inspire a turn toward abstraction for the famed photographer
Published by Steidl.
Acclaimed for her intimate nudes, Mona Kuhn takes a new direction into abstraction in her latest series. Photographed at a golden modernist structure on the edge of Joshua Tree National Park, architectural lines, light reflections and a single figure have been carefully balanced against the backdrop of the Californian desert.
The human figure in these images--Kuhn’s friend and collaborator Jacintha--emerges like a surrealist mirage, fragmented and indistinct, at times submerged in shadows or overexposed. The building’s facades of glass and mirrors serve as optical planes, an extension of the artist’s camera and lens. Light is split into refracting colors, desert vegetation grows sideways, inside is outside and outside in. Kuhn pushes a certain disorienting effect by introducing metallic foils as an additional surface, at times producing purely abstract results. The work marks Kuhn’s increasing use of techniques that appear to merge the figure, abstraction and landscape into one.
Mona Kuhn (born 1969) is best known for her large-scale, dreamlike photographs of the human form. Her pictures often reference classical themes with a light and insightful touch. Kuhn’s approach to her work is distinguished by the close relationships she develops with her subjects, resulting in images of remarkable naturalness and intimacy. Born in São Paulo, Brazil, Kuhn lives and works in Los Angeles.
