Darren Bader

2018 Season

Darren Bader, a multidisciplinary artist and frequent collaborator of Ricci Albenda, was selected by the artist to read at the opening of his exhibition Open Universe. Bader concealed lines of poetry within fortune cookies and distributed them to the audience in a large bucket. His verse was performed in a collaborative and playful way: people gathered near the podium in small groups and read the pieced-together poems aloud. Bader’s unique and experimental project explored the interconnections of object, word, and voice by presenting his poetry within tactile, edible objects. His distinctive performance was thought-provoking in dialogue with the Albenda’s Open Universe.

The New York Times has written: “Darren Bader’s work is beautiful and fun in unconventional, brain-twisting ways…it endeavors to demonstrate things about perception… he straddles real and conceptual space with impressive aplomb.”

Name bottle bite
The wellness toss
Would I devour dental floss
That vitamin that sends the brief
To sloughing bottoms underneath:

“Bitter brackets sold in silk
Embroidered slots of mother’s milk
Trickle to the sticking phial
With bloating blather still in style:

“Digestion spent
The elves repent
Their organs spume
A free perfume:

“A field aghast
Admires its last
Desiring brick
Designed too thick
For ceiling flocks
On springtime shocks
Each evening keels
Amused appeal:

“Should your motion lent in lead
Laced of wilderness instead
Floated on the flags that cross
Some mariner’s fey albatross
Summon static soaked in love
Traced in subtleties above
And stoke some basin stuck in space
That must arrange fair frail place—

The elves entrap the better gauge
Padded down in saccharine rage
The fungal faucet steams cocoons
We’ve finally occupied the moon
May laughter strain the opportune
May effervescence come too soon
Condensation dampens fast
The liberty of time at last
Let it wimper let it bloom
Let it fabricate the room
The door is open constantly

'T' Space Rhinebeck

Darren Bader

2018 Season