UP Gallery is proud to present Mona Kuhn’s first solo exhibition in Asia titled Intimate, with a curated selection from her latest series: Private, She Disappeared into Complete Silence, and Poems.

In times where images are often overly exploited and information interchanging rapidly, how does intimacy take form? In She Disappeared into Complete Silence Jacintha, a long-time friend and a collaborator appear in the reflective glass house designed by the American architect Robert Stone. Fully nude her figure gently morphs into the surroundings of geometric elements of the architecture and simultaneously incorporates the vastness of the Joshua Tree National Park. Under the juxtaposition of the softness of the body against the angles of the exterior, an intriguing series is formed. The sunlight, reflections, and bits of metal foil create a moment of calmness and fluidity captured delicately by Kuhn. In contrast to the series, Private is met with images of sand, earth, paper, and moths. The dryness and coarse texture tamper with the senses as if there is a need to end an overwhelming spiritual draught. The series conveys a mystery in a mirage where the cycle of life and death seem to follow an unknown course. To close the exhibition, a single image from the series Poem situates at the entrance of the gallery space, also serving as the beginning, reaching a complete cycle of understanding Kuhn’s works.

Under the gaze, physical vulnerability appears inevitable for the nude form. The quickness of the camera shutter, on the other hand, causes an illusion of its ability to produce meaningless mass images in a fraction. These characteristics align with the current environment we live in. Yet in Kuhn’s world seconds are prolonged and the human form is free from judgment. We return to abstraction, timelessness, sincerity, and most important of all rediscovering the meaning of intimacy.

Mona Kuhn is best known for her large-scale photographs of the human form. Her approach is unusual in that she develops close relationships with her subjects, resulting in images of remarkable intimacy, and creating the effect of people naked but comfortable in their own skin. In addition, Kuhn’s playful combination of visual strategies, such as translucency explores our connectedness with the environment. A sublime sense of comfort and intelligence permeates her works, showing the human body in its most natural state while simultaneously re-envisioning the nude as a contemporary canon of art.

Kuhn was born in São Paulo, Brazil, in 1969, of German descent. In 1989, Kuhn moved to the US and earned her BA from The Ohio State University, before furthering her studies at the San Francisco Art Institute. She is currently an independent scholar at The Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles. Mona Kuhn’s first monograph, Photographs, was debuted by Steidl in 2004; followed by Evidence (2007), Native (2010), Bordeaux Series (2011), Private (2014), and She Disappeared into Complete Silence (2019). In addition, Kuhn’s latest monograph titled Bushes and Succulents has been published by Stanley Barker Editions, with a debut at Jeu de Paume in Paris, France. Occasionally, Mona teaches at UCLA and the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena.

Mona Kuhn’s work is in private and public collections worldwide, including The J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Hammer Museum, Perez Art Museum Miami, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, and the Kiyosato Museum in Japan. Kuhn’s work has been exhibited at The Louvre Museum and Le Bal in Paris; The Whitechapel Gallery and Royal Academy of Arts in London; Musée de l’Elysée in Switzerland; Leopold Museum in Vienna, and Australian Centre for Photography, Sydney. Mona Kuhn lives and works in Los Angeles.