Martin Eder

The paintings that have won the 38-year-old Berlin-based artist Martin Eder the widest audience, with their lush, velvety colors and faded elegance, a patently disturbing documentation of a dreamy Netherworld somewhere between domicility (or pornographic domesticity) and death. In these images, which always seem haunted by some unseen force, Eder subjects the psycho-pornography of every day life to a ruthless examination. Which is not to say his paintings are devoid of beauty; Eder's poetic instincts play far too great a role in ordering these melancholy states, which a more callous hand might smudge with less ambiguous emotions. Although the paintings are richly painted and romantic, presenting an idealized world, an underlying strain of violence and despair is also apparent.

Some may say that German artist Martin Eder's work is a ham-fisted reworking of kitch and porn ala Jeff Koons. But I find there to be a luscious sensualness and a slightly human awkwardness to the way he approaches the figure that transcends any simple-minded comment on society. Eder's work may be vulgar and sometimes crass (such as the fantastic Masturbating Woman Surrounded by Bad Towels) but he somehow hits at a perfect balance of classical form and grotesque pornographic pose that accentuates the erotic qualities of an ideal figure's imperfections.