Published by Koenig Books. Text by Negar Azimi, Tess Edmonson, Peter Eleey, Bruce Hainley, Luca Lo Pinto, Andrew Norman Wilson, Dena Yago.
Full of linguistic games and puns, and expressed in texts, photos and installations, the work of New York conceptualist Darren Bader (born 1978) launches a playful form of institutional critique while embracing the conventions through which art circulates (in these respects, his work has been seen as partially a dialogue with certain concerns of Marcel Duchamp). Whether sculptural (using found elements) or linguistic, Bader's pieces tend to incorporate all components of the art system: the work, the artist, the gallery owner, the collector, the exhibition visitor and readers of his texts. This book documents his first solo exhibition in Italy, for which he plays with the traditional format of a solo show and turns it into an analytical tool of models by which works of art are mediated within an institutional space. It also includes an invitation to exhibit addressed to a series of other artists, whose works are presented together with Bader’s.
This publication documents Darren Bader's 2014 solo show at Andrew Kreps gallery. "This show is three shows,” Bader explains, tying together the unconventional exhibition of 60 photographs on the wall, assorted found objects on the floor and the sparse information at the gallery desk. A mixture of documentation styles within the book add to the array of imagery Bader presents to the reader, fusing the conceptual and tactile in every aspect of his work.
This volume of writings by New York conceptualist Darren Bader (born 1978) features texts for 77 artworks. Writing is at the core of Bader's work: he offers deceptively simple propositions for artworks to be carried out by gallerists, museums and collectors who then exhibit the works. Each time a work is sold, Bader produces a text that explains the parameters of the artwork. The propositions can be extremely precise or abstract; however, these guides are not made available to the public. Bader has also written propositions for impossible artworks, such as a proposal for installing a baby-changing table under Leonardo da Vinci's "The Last Supper" at the Convent of Santa Maria delle Grazie in Milan. This book foregrounds Bader's writing and provides a key to his humorous and sometimes enigmatic works.
Darren Bader’s Life As a Readymade is a four-part disquisition on contemporary art culture and his doubts about its terms of engagement. Addressing inanities, profanities and vanities in the contemporary world of art, the first section is an “open letter to the art world”; the second a meditation on the art fair phenomenon; the third is about “naming things in the face of no names”; the final section addresses what the artist regards as “a paucity of poetics.
Darren Bader: Photographs I Like, To Have and to Hold
Darren Bader: 77 and/or 58 and/or 19
Darren Bader: Life As a Readymade