Erwin Kneihsl
Modern Mona Lisa
2015
Photograph
Lambda print, artist’s frame
94,5 x 132 cm
Edition 1/3 + 1 AP
Acquired in 2017

On view in the lobby.

The history of Central Europe treated in photography and film is one of Erwin Kneihsl’s (b. 1952) long-standing interests. Fascination with modern photography is well visible in his Modern Mona Lisa as well as the taste for interconnecting different historical periods with relation to art history. Kneihsl is absorbed by the object itself and by its variable function in time. Figurines played their most important role in art during the surrealist movement, and although the artist is well aware of this fact, he treats his Mona Lisa in traditional black and white photography as an object of specific material qualities.