MoMA P.S. 1 announces a solo exhibition of Darren Bader – Art Daily

LONG ISLAND CITY, NY.- Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana Marx / Stuff: the precise affinity between the generic and the specific –Ford / I see you’ve gone and changed your name again –Cohen

Sculpture’s everywhere. It’s space and space is everywhere. Space is in your thought, space is in front of your eyes and around you, it fills your mouth and infiltrates your hearing. Space is the stuff on the other side of contact. Our hands—which is to say, our eyes ears tongue nose respiration language—are all over the place/space.

There’s this stuff called art. I’m really into it, or at least I was and think I still am. This stuff is a way to infuse space. Art is not sculpture somehow. Sculpture comes to establish a place; art subsists on space, but also transcends it. Art might be sleeping in the parking lot, but could also drive up and take you out for dinner. Art somehow happens inside of you—it’s any of your proverbial hands being guided by art’s specific and unlocatable contours.

I had to say all that because as someone who plays the role/vocation of this maybe-obsolescing thing called ―artist,‖ I want to define where I’m coming from, and where you might take what I’m giving to you. I don’t have a lot of faith in museums and galleries being our primary brokers of the word ―art.‖ So I guess I’m trying to tell you that although I’m complicit with words like ―art‖ and ―sculpture,‖ I’m not as complicit with their distribution. Although my sculpture at this museum isn’t critical of this distribution, I’d feel a little disingenuous if I were to simply say, “hey this is my artwork,” and that was all I said. Hmm, don’t want to sound so didactic. Basically, I hope you find something of value in this area of the museum that is nominally a show by me. The museum says my name is Darren Bader, but my name could just as easily be Tracey Emin, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, or Doesn’t Matter.

Art is a beautiful thing. I love it more than I’m able to express. Trying to find a home for it (or in it) is a strange thing nowadays. I don’t know if you know what I mean. Leaving you with:

Time and touch are the beginnings of all encounters

Darren Bader (b. 1978) was born in Bridgeport, Connecticut, and lives in New York City. Bader was included in Greater New York 2010 at MoMA PS1, as well as Modify as Needed (2011) at MOCA Miami, Florida; The Color of Company (2011) at the Abrons Arts Center, New York; Looking Back/The Fifth White Columns Annual at White Columns, New York; Rob Pruitt’s Flea Market (2009) at the Tate Modern, London; FAX at the Drawing Center, New York; and To Illlustrate and Multiply: An Open Book (2008) at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA).