MONA KUHN: KINGS ROAD

A Rudolph Schindler House

29 April – 4 June 2023

Inbetween

Photography / Multimedia Installation / Documents

Kunsthaus Göttingen presents the exhibition Mona Kuhn Kings Road, A Rudolph Schindler House – a photography, multimedia and sound installation created in collaboration between Kuhn and the sound artist and composer Boris Salchow, which spans the three floors of the house. This is the first comprehensive solo exhibition in Germany of this internationally acclaimed contemporary photographer. In experiencing the exhibition, visitors participate in Kuhn’s visual research on the Schindler House, the personal residence of famed Austrian architect Rudolph M. Schindler in Los Angeles, California. Completed in 1922, the house was conceived as a design and social experiment and quickly became an avant-garde meeting place for artists and intellectuals such as Marlene Dietrich, Albert Einstein, Richard Neutra, and Frank Lloyd Wright.

Kuhn begins her research in Schindler’s archive on the first floor, uncovering rarely shown sketches, photographs, and correspondence that provide a glimpse into the architect’s private life. Among other things, Kuhn discovered a handwritten letter the architect wrote to a mysterious woman, rejecting her romantic desires. The letter is a key entry point into Kuhn’s visual fiction. Other archival finds shed light on the American architectural scene of the time.

As in a play, the tension heightens on the second floor with a presentation of large-scale photographic prints. Using solarization techniques favored by the photo surrealists in the early 20th century, Kuhn brings to life an enigmatic figure that traverses time and space between the constructed world and its abstraction. The remnants of what was once alive in Schindler’s constructed world materialize in a series of photographs.

The grand finale awaits on the second floor with an immersive multidimensional video and sound installation in which visitors* become inhabitants of the house. Through the superimposition of still and moving images, the viewer enters a world in which the two protagonists, the architect and the lover, find their way back to each other.

The more than 20-year collaboration between Gerhard Steidl and Mona Kuhn manifests itself in a collection of art books, which are exhibited in the Kabinetraum (2nd floor).

Curated by Gerhard Steidl

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For more information, check out the interviews Mona Kuhn gave on the each individual floor of the exhibition:

Mona Kuhn on »Kings Road: A Rudolph Schindler House« – from the book to the wall (curated by Gerhard Steidl R.)

All interview parts here.

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This exhibition is supported by

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Picture left: “Realm” ©Mona Kuhn, 2021

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Archive Source: © R. M. Schindlerpapers, Architecture and Design Collection, Art, Design & Architecture Museum; University of California, Santa Barbara.