Maureen Paley Interim Art is pleased to present a solo exhibition of work by Malerie Marder.

Following her Photographers’ Gallery exhibition last year she presents a body of mainly black and white work, together with two colour portraits for which she is more associated.

Her work relates to the time honoured photographic genre of nude study, made contemporary through a disquieting psychological charge. This charge derives in part from the photographer’s close, often familial relationship with her sitters. Marder has staged photographs with her mother, father, sister, former boyfriends and her self in the nude. Recently she has begun to explore group portraits with friends and acquaintances.

Marder’s work is dark and has an erotic, almost purple undercurrent that creates an awkward tension. The locations she chooses for her photographs – one hour ‘sex’ motels, the interiors and patios of suburban homes, steam rooms and saunas, contribute to their strangely detached mood.

Living near to Hollywood prompts Marder to borrow from the language of film-making. Her black and white work relates to the troubled glamour in the tradition of film noir, while at the same time borrowing from crude, soft-core pornography and naturist examination of the figure. Contemporary ‘staged’ photography is often linked to the artificially concentrated, dramatically arrested moment of a film still, Marder’s photographs could well have emanated from a mental movie screening, somewhere, deep in her own unconscious.

Malerie Marder graduated from Yale University in 1998 where she studied with Gregory Crewdson. Her work has been seen in 1999 in the group exhibition Another Girl, Another Planet and the solo exhibition Because I Was Flesh at Artemis Greenberg Van Doren Gallery, New York. Last year (2000) she had a solo exhibition at The Photographers’ Gallery, London. Her work can currently be seen in Casino 2001: The First Quadrennial of Contemporary Art at S.M.A.K., Ghent, Belgium. She lives and works in Los Angeles.

Gallery opening hours: Thursday to Sunday 11.00 – 6.00 and by appointment