Baderʼs practice is based on the inclusion of different elements — consuming objects, words, images, animals, persons — that generate concrete, imaginary, real and fictional relations.

He removes meaning, yet adds new levels of understanding to works, objects and (possible, or often impossible) descriptions and manages to lend an original twist to a practice whose meaning can be sought in the carefully arranged inclusion of all the components of the art system: the work, the artist, the gallery owner, the collector, the exhibition visitor and readers of art texts.

In this sense, Baderʼs work can be analysed in terms of ‘information technology’: it separates and rejoins the inner system of the work (its aesthetic component) and the external structure, or “back end”, which runs and conditions it (the art system itself).

Exploring a discourse which began with Marcel Duchampʼs seminal ready-mades and continued subsequently, during the 60s and 70s, with the criticisms of art system put forward by the Institutional Critique, Bader argues that the aspects of artistic production underlying those assumptions are now so obvious, thoroughly explored and artistically expressed, even in terms of deconstruction and direct repudiation, that the next step is no longer a question of criticising or keeping in check the art system, but instead acceptance, conscious incorporation and a shared narrative.

Bader thus demonstrates that the joint participation of all the different players involved in the system cannot fail to generate, together with the additional inclusion of factors and ideas borrowed from the omnipresent media, an added value of art in the current era of the sharing economy.

Accompanies the exhibition, Darren Bader: (@mined_oud) at madre – Museo dʼArte Contemporanea, Donnaregina, Naples (14 October 2017 – 2 April 2018).