Monica
Majoli

Born in Los Angeles, where she lives and works, Monica Majoli builds, series by series, an intimate connection between the image and desire. In Black Mirror, a series of black-toned paintings based on photographs taken during single photo sessions with some of her former partners in a room covered in mirrors, Majoli explores the complexity—even the perversity—of romantic relationships, even after they have come to an end. Asking only some of her former lovers—and excluding others—to participate, nude, in the project, they are nonetheless partially shielded from the gaze of others by the darkness of the final images. Majoli thus creates a profound tension between the private and the public, the intimate and the visible, but also between the past and the present. “Interested in the space in-between the photograph and the painting,” Majoli also stated: “It’s all about this idea of the private, the autobiographical, documentation, but also there’s always been this interest I’d had in painting as a fictional medium. There’s a conflict in trying to create something factual within something constructed. Where is truth in that?”