{"id":172666,"date":"2025-12-03T10:28:13","date_gmt":"2025-12-03T10:28:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/172666\/"},"modified":"2025-12-03T10:28:13","modified_gmt":"2025-12-03T10:28:13","slug":"how-darren-bader-makes-a-show-buying-amy-winehouses-weight-machine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/172666\/","title":{"rendered":"How Darren Bader Makes a Show (Buying Amy Winehouse\u2019s Weight Machine)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tTo spend a few minutes with the staff at the New York location of Matthew Brown Gallery<\/a> these days, talking about how the current show, Darren Bader<\/a>\u2019s \u201cYouth,\u201d came together, is to be regaled with tales that sound too unlikely to be true. That\u2019s the way it often goes with the New York conceptual artist, whose works explore truly absurd territory. They may seem like jokes, but at least to me, they often open up the mind to a sense of wonder that leaves them resonating far beyond the initial gag.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI was talking to a friend who came by,\u201d director Jack Eisenberg told me during a recent call. \u201c\u2018You\u2019re really fired up about this,\u2019 he said. \u2018Are you this fired up about every show?\u2019\u201d Brown and Eisenberg have long been excited about Bader, who has previously shown with esteemed dealers Blum & Poe (Los Angeles, New York and Tokyo), Andrew Kreps (New York), Sadie Coles (London), and Franco Noero (Turin); it\u2019s his first show with Brown, so the enthusiasm is merited.<\/p>\n

\t\tRelated Articles<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Darren<\/p>\n

\n\tThe fabrication of the simplest pieces created surprising challenges. For example, one group of Bader works consists of an \u201cA on B\u201d format; an example in this show has a mound of fruit spread, placed on a 1986 Stephen King horror novel centered on a villain that goes by a simple pronoun: jam on It. Those three words, of course, make up the title of a 1984 hip-hop hit<\/a> by Brooklyn troupe Newcleus. It turns out that even in New York, jam is a hard food to find, said Eisenberg. (Nota bene: Bader does not assign dates to his works.)<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"A<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tDarren Bader, detail from 9 plinths (no date).<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tBrian Boucher<\/p>\n

\n\tThe artist has for years reliably served up amusing conceptual pieces, sometimes also involving edible items, like Chicken Burrito Beef Burrito, which consisted of the two named foodstuffs in an art gallery. Seems like a joke, right? But when the Calder Foundation awarded him a prize in 2013 and asked how his work extends Alexander Calder\u2019s legacy, he replied, \u201cIn questioning what the limits\/defiinition of sculpture could be.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tIn an art world frequently dominated by discussions of price, he has often explored the concept of value, for example in a 2014 show with Kreps, in which some pieces consisted solely of exchanges of money. For $25,800, you could purchase the piece $15,031, consisting of the named amount. If that doesn\u2019t seem like a bargain, well, you could also, for just $4,200, get $16,937. And in \u201cInnate Value,\u201d his last New York show, at Blum Gallery, the works were each assigned a value; if the piece was later re-sold for any amount other than the one agreed upon, it would be considered a forgery. Flippers, beware!<\/p>\n

\n\tHis work has also gotten even more meta, as in 2023, when, to mark two decades as an artist, he staged what might be deemed a simultaneous celebration and surrender, when he offered his artistic practice<\/a> for sale, with an asking price in the low seven digits. If you bought it, you would get to be Darren Bader, artist, and he would have to take on a new profession. (He apparently didn\u2019t get an offer at that level, so fortunately for us he is stuck being Darren Bader, artist.)\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tHe\u2019s appeared in notable exhibitions like the 2014 Whitney Biennial and the 2019 Venice Biennale, and been the subject of solo exhibitions at institutions including New York\u2019s MoMA PS1, but he might be the first artist to downplay himself; his bio page at Andrew Kreps\u2019s website calls him \u201can aging sculpture\/literature brand working in AR, elision, found object, humor, permutation\/chance, poem, rhetoric, and video.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Three<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tDarren Bader, socks (suite) (no date).<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCharles Benton<\/p>\n

\n\tBack to the Brown show, where three bins near the entry solicit donations of socks. (That clothing item seems to be of enduring interest to the artist; his email address includes the word hosiery.) Tied to the handle of one of the bins is an example printed with the face of a popular nineteenth-century mystery writer which has been injected with an in-demand neurotoxin for reducing facial wrinkles: Poe socks with Botox.\u00a0Wrangling the injectable form of the medicine was difficult.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"A<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tDarren Bader, socks (suite) (no date), detail.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCharles Benton<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt comes in a pulverized form and you can\u2019t even see it,\u201d Bader explained in a phone call, explaining that to create the injectable form, you have to suspend it in a diluant (the liquid in which something is diluted). \u201cIt is generally injected but you can\u2019t have the solution sitting around, because it has an expiration date, whereas the powder has a longer shelf life,\u201d he said. Eisenberg explained that the injectable form actually requires a prescription; to get it, the gallery called upon art-collecting Tribeca dermatologist Evan Rieder.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tHow much could the liquid even interact with the hosiery, I asked Bader? What physical matter do the Poe socks offer to inject the stuff in?<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt was just about doing it,\u201d said Bader, not really answering but comparing it to a well-known earlier piece in which he injected an Italian food staple with narcotics: \u201cIt was like the notorious lasagna on heroin. I had to get it done. It had to be physically realized.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWhen Bader showed at Los Angeles\u2019s Felix Art Fair in 2020, it was under the made-up name of an exhibitor, Fomo Haber<\/a>, supposedly of Athens, Greece, and all the artists were fictitious. Finley James\/James Finley, for example, made artworks called \u201cOurs\u201d out of celebrity memorabilia like a goblet that once belonged to Ringo Starr. That was, Bader told me, the first time he introduced works that brought together curious items formerly owned by famous people.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"An<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tDarren Bader, CS26 (no date).<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCharles Benton<\/p>\n

\n\tThe new show has a passel of them. Take, for example, one work that consists of the following, per the exhibition\u2019s checklist: \u201cAmy Winehouse\u2019s weight machine; Shirley MacClaine\u2019s [sic] shoe; Ray Bradbury\u2019s posters; Richard Petty\u2019s globe; Mae West\u2019s hat; Christine McVie\u2019s wall art; Pat Morita\u2019s decor object.\u201d You might think the artist is kidding; he is not. For example, Winehouse\u2019s weight machine, a Vision Fitness ST-740 ab\/lower back model, still bears a tag from Julien\u2019s Auctions marked with its lot number, 584, from a sale of 837 items from her estate, as Eisenberg pointed out when I expressed some incredulity. Julien\u2019s website<\/a> indicates that lot 584 sold for just $320.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThat\u2019s funny in itself, since these machines retail for far more than that. Did Winehouse\u2019s ownership of the machine somehow make it less valuable?<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWho knows?\u201d said Bader. \u201cThe auction did well in general.\u201d Indeed, the sale exceeded estimates to bring more than $4 million, with every item sold, led by a dress designed by the soul singer\u2019s stylist, Naomi Parry, which Winehouse wore at her final performance, in 2011, before she died from alcohol poisoning. Estimated at $15,000, it fetched $243,200.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThese auctions are just ridiculous,\u201d said Bader. Of Winehouse\u2019s ab machine, he said, \u201cNo one wanted that gym equipment.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAs Bader brings these wayward objects together, Eisenberg explained, so the buyer has some liberty in deciding how to display them. The pieces come with a certificate of authenticity, he said, that stipulates that the objects should remain together as often as possible, although perhaps not all the time.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cOnce someone acquires the work, they almost become part of it,\u201d he said. \u201cThey\u2019re welcome to participate in a way that for most artists, it\u2019s not even fathomable for their work to exist in this way.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe first item on the exhibition checklist is for a piece, everything you don\u2019t need, that, for Eisenberg, provides a kind of conceptual key, though it has no physical form. Its dimensions are, as checklists often indicate for installation artworks, \u201cvariable.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cSo many objects in the show belonged to other people,\u201d Eisenberg said. \u201cThe creation comes from other people saying, \u2018I don\u2019t really need these things.\u2019\u201d Leave it to Bader to challenge prospective collectors as to whether they really want to bring home other people\u2019s junk, one day, perhaps, to be ejected, Marie Kondo style.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"An<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tDarren Bader, CS25 (no date).<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCharles Benton<\/p>\n

\n\tAnother piece in the Brown show consists of Sylvester Stallone\u2019s chaise longue, Mary Tyler Moore\u2019s drill round, Shelley Duvall\u2019s hat, Elgin Baylor\u2019s cu\ufb04inks, Ellen Burstyn\u2019s book, Tom Petty\u2019s cake knife, and Elvira\u2019s quilt.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tDon\u2019t know what a drill round is? \u201cNeither did I until I won that lot,\u201d Bader said. A dummy artillery round, it\u2019s used for training purposes. This item in particular is a U.S. Navy style MK6 drill round<\/a>, which Bader got at a Doyle auction for $320 on a $400 high estimate. It\u2019s not surprising that it might be the odd lot in a sale including antiquities, artworks, furniture, jewelry, handbags and the like. Made of wood and metal, it stands some 32 inches high.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt was no easy task,\u201d Bader recalled. \u201cIt was one of the few items I bid on. I went to pick it up a few months after the fact. There it was, unwrapped on the auction house floor. It was Rosh Hashanah and I walked by some synagogues on the way to pick it up, and I thought, \u2018It is probably not wise to walk around with a drill round.\u2019 I said, \u2018Can you wrap this up? I don\u2019t want to get arrested today.\u2019\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cSo they wrapped it up, and then I had lunch with [collector\/artist\/journalist] Kenny Schachter,\u201d said Bader. \u201cThere was Kenny at a fancy restaurant, and there I was with a drill round in a moving blanket.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cBut,\u201d he said, \u201cthat\u2019s beside the point.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tDarren Bader\u2019s \u201cYouth\u201d is on view at Matthew Brown Gallery through January 10.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"To spend a few minutes with the staff at the New York location of Matthew Brown Gallery these…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":172667,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[307,304,305,306,95179,308,93,61,60,95180],"class_list":{"0":"post-172666","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-arts","9":"tag-arts-and-design","10":"tag-artsanddesign","11":"tag-artsdesign","12":"tag-darren-bader","13":"tag-design","14":"tag-entertainment","15":"tag-ie","16":"tag-ireland","17":"tag-matthew-brown-gallery"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172666","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=172666"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172666\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/172667"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=172666"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=172666"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=172666"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}