Anti-Portraits of a Young Artist

Describing many of the semi-abstract images in her new show as “anti-portraits,” Mirabelle Marden explains: “Usually there’s something sculptural [in each image] that alludes to something else—not a figure but a fragmented body.” From night scenes in Timbuktu to voyeuristic snapshots of upstate New York, her photographs are the result of fierce wanderlust and an idiosyncratic eye for detail. Although Marden studied photography, it was only after her gallery, The Rivington Arms, closed just over a year ago that she decided to engage with the art form more fully. Kimberley Brown of London’s Brown Gallery asked Marden to participate in the group show Bendable Poseable (running through June 19th) alongside New York-based painter Dana Schutz and sculptor Anthea Hamilton when they ran into each other during Frieze art fair last fall. The theme uniting all three artists is their penchant for treading the line between abstract and figurative representation. Marden credits both her parents—her father is renowned abstract painter Brice Marden; her mother Helen is also a painter—as key influences on her aesthetic: “There’s something romantic about the work and the way that I shoot things that I think comes from my father, the movement and light—but the sexual undertones I got off my mom.”