Mishka Henner’s work combines elements from mass media, public datasets, and internet culture to address a range of charged cultural and economic subjects. Henner has described himself as an aggregator of data and images, often producing works that are dystopian in tone. Citing the influence of writers such as J. G. Ballard, Jean Baudrillard, and Michel Houellebecq, he writes, “America continues to dominate the European imagination. The optical superstructure it has helped create ensnares us but can also illuminate us.”
Search History is a solo-presentation of Henner’s photography-based practice, including paintings, prints and his self-published artist books spanning the greater part of the last decade. Many of his projects involve extensive documentary research combined with the meticulous construction of imagery from materials sourced online. In each, the free and fluid circulation of images is set against underlying economic systems. Photographs, silkscreens, books and paintings addressing state censorship; the presidency; the media; the art market; and the silver, beef and oil industries are brought together in a comprehensive survey which focuses squarely on the United States.
Born in 1976 in Brussels, Belgium, Henner moved to the UK in 1984. In 2013, he was awarded the Infinity Award for Art by the International Center of Photography, and was shortlisted for the Deutsche Börse Photography Prize in the same year. His large-scale works focusing on landscapes carved by the beef and oil industries of America were shortlisted for the Prix Pictet in 2014, and simultaneously graced the cover of Art in America. In 2016, Henner was selected for the 30th anniversary of MoMA’s New Photography exhibition.
Henner’s work has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions, including most recently Counter Intelligence at Orebro Konstall, Orebro, Sweden (2017). He has been featured in large historical surveys at the Centre Pompidou, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and Fotomuseum Winterthur. Henner has also participated in contemporary surveys at the McCord Museum Montreal, Les Rencontres d’Arles, and the International Center of Photography. His works are in numerous public collections, including the Centre Pompidou, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the New York Public Library, the Victoria & Albert Museum, the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, and the Tate Collection of Artists’ Books. Print-on-demand book publishing has been at the heart of Henner’s practice, producing more than 12 books since 2010.
