As many familiar with my work might surmise, I have idle hands. Typing is the closest thing I have to a manual craft. So I often turn to the keyboard to escape myself. For years I had a real romance with emailing. More recently, poetry has returned as semi-routine (routinely imperfect) relief-release.
Like so many things contemporary, contemporary poetry is extensive. Myriad writers can turn a phrase, stagger a sentence, respire the muse, talk in truth. Will a reader ever find/select a poet's volume (or, perhaps more saliently, that (temporarily) salient poem within it) in the brick-and-mortar POETRY section or 'in'/'at' online libraries as endless as Google and Amazon? (Not to mention all the poetry not claiming to be such but clearly such to the eye-ear-mind of its percipient.) So goes the poetry.
Like so many other contemporary poets(/makers), I aspire to write(/make) meaningful language(/stuff). Some words(/stuff) I write(/make) make(s) it into public view. This upcoming show @ Andrew Kreps Gallery will be the most contemporary instance of that. As an alternative to in-many-ways-anonymous books/ content, I'll add more potential anonymity to the world of too many goods and meanings.
A question that remains for me: If given the opportunity to publish these poems in/as a traditional book after publishing them as I do in the show, would I?
I frequently aim to entertain In game and name (and sometimes in shame) I've kept up/at my apparent vocation That Pop and Concept are near in kind in my mind That I feel for things as if they can truly and never be kept My eye and spirit feast, and again turn enfeebled soon after The world's harrowed laughter, intransigent glee If you were me, how often would you reckon with reason?
Darren Bader is an aging sculpture/literature brand working in AR, elision, found object, humour, permutation/chance, poem, rhetoric, and video.
Darren Bader (Bridgeport, CT, 1978) lives and works in New York. Solo shows of his work held in institutions include (@mined_oud) Madre, Naples, (2017–2018);_ Meaning and Difference_, The Power Station, Dallas (2017);_ Reading Writing Arithmetic_, Radio Athènes-Institute for the advancement of contemporary visual culture, Athens (2015);_ Where Is a Bicycle's Vagina (and Other Inquiries) or Around the Samovar, 1857_, Oslo (2012);_ Images_, MoMA-PS1, New York (2012). Awarded the Calder Prize in 2013, Bader has taken part in numerous group exhibitions and biennials including the following: 13éme Biennale de Lyon. La vie moderne, Lyon (2015);_ Under the Clouds: From Paranoia to the Digital Sublime_, Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art, Porto (2015); The Whitney Biennial, The Whitney Museum of Contemporary Art, New York (2014);_ Antigrazioso_, Palais de Tokyo, Parigi (2013);_ Something About a Tree_, FLAG Foundation, New York (2013);_ Empire State_, Palazzo delle Esposizioni, Rome (2013);_ Oh, you mean cellophane and all that crap_, The Calder Foundation, New York (2012);_ Greater New York_, MoMA-PS1, New York (2010)
Andrew Kreps Gallery was founded in New York in 1996. Widening its original focus on emerging American artists, the program shortly thereafter expanded to include international artists, many of whom had their first exhibitions in the United States or New York at the gallery. After nearly 20 years of operation in Chelsea, the gallery announced it's relocation to Tribeca, at 22 Cortlandt Alley, which opened in September 2019. The gallery additionally programs 55 Walker Street, a space jointly operated with Bortolami and kaufmann repetto. The gallery represents the work of 30 internationally active artists. Recent additions to the gallery’s roster include He Xiangyu, Camille Blatrix, the estate of Corita Kent and the work of Bruno Munari.
