M+B 612 NORTH ALMONT DRIVE LOS ANGELES 90069 California États-Unis
M+B is pleased to announce an exhibition of Mona Kuhn’s latest series Native, opening October 24th and running through December 5th with a reception and book signing for the artist on Saturday, October 24th from 7 to 9 p.m. Shot entirely in her native country of Brazil, this series marks a 20 year return for the artist best known for her alluring figurative studies in a French naturist colony. Kuhn described the work as “a personal journey . . . [like] a bird that flies back into the forest, searching for its childhood’s nest . . . The images here are a creation of my abstracted wishes and dreams”.
Kuhn found herself returning to Brazil several times throughout 2008, sparking a string of memories and new experiences that inform this newest series. Native is comprised of jungle still lifes, interior still lifes, and classic portraiture set partly in an apartment in Sao Paulo which had been abandoned roughly the same amount of time she had been gone. The homecoming, literal and sympathetic, ignited something new, and the resulting oeuvre is rich, moody in tonality, and the most deeply psychological of Kuhn’s work to date. The play between new friends—the people featured in her work were all first time collaborators—and an old space is a marked departure from her earlier series of familiar friends in a temporary, makeshift space. In exploring the essence of reconciliation and regrowth, Native moves the viewer back and forth between wilderness and civilization, carnality and oblivion, fecundity and decay, interweaving a sultry and sensual visual narrative.
Mona Kuhn was born in Brazil in 1969, the first child of German parents. Solo exhibitions of her work have been held in Los Angeles, New York, Paris, Brazil and Venice. Steidl published her past two monographs Photographs (2004) and Evidence (2007), as well as the soon to be released and currently Native (2009). Signed copies of her latest publication will be available concurrently with the exhibition. Mona Kuhn’s work is held in collections such as the Musee de la Photographie de Charleroi (Belgium), Schwarz Fine and Contemporary Art Collection (Berlin, Germany), Nicolaus von Oesterreich Collection (Frankfurt, Germany), di Rosa Foundation (San Francisco, California), Sir Elton John Collection (England), Buhl Foundation (New York), Miami Art Museum (Miami, Florida), and SFMOMA (San Francisco, California). This will be her second exhibition with M+B, and the first showing of this new body of work.
Andrew Bush graduated from Yale University with an MFA in Photography in 1982 and has been pursuing the Vector Portraits series since he moved to Los Angeles in 1989. The work has been exhibited extensively in solo and group shows, including The Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York), Walker Art Center (Minneapolis), Davis Museum and Cultural Center at Wellesley College (Wellesley, Massachusetts) and Staatliche Kunsthalle (Baden-Baden, Germany). Bush’s work is held in prominent public collections such as the Whitney Museum of American Art (New York), Art Institute of Chicago (Chicago), The Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York), The Museum of Modern Art (New York), The Museum of Fine Arts (Houston), The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, The George Eastman House (Rochester, New York) and The Victoria & Albert Museum (London). The artist currently resides in Los Angeles. In 2008, Yale University Press published his monograph Drive, which includes an interview by Jeff L. Rosenheim, a curator of photography at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. This will be Bush’s first exhibition with M+B.