Darren Bader
CS20
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Aretha Franklin’s hat; Keith Flint's glasses; Bill Wyman’s blazer; BB King’s shirt; Barbra Streisand’s belt; Blake Shelton’s jeans; Little Richard's shoe-trees; Janet Jackson's wakeboard; Slash's filing cabinet
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Dimensions variable
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Copyright Darren Bader, courtesy Blum and Poe
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About the work
Word/name and thing are very difficult to extricate from one another (of course a word/name is technically a thing too, so this further complicates things).
Things can have aura(e), can therefore be "elevated" in the way one may know/feel art.
Celebrity clearly has its claims to aura, though admitting such to ourselves can be uncomfortable and morally murky.
Though celebrities are human too, so we can't really fault them for that; we may even find this humanity part of their appeal(/aura).
Thus... to de-auratically elucidate this particular body of work I've clumsily titled the CS series (CS = celebrity sculptures):
Celebrities are people too + people own things + things commonly don't present an/as auratic quality + celebrities perhaps shouldn't have an auratic quality (fame, a weird human thing) + perhaps the things celebrities own(ed) will bring us all down to earth = tender satire, common humility.
-Darren Bader, 29th of March 2022
About the artist
DARREN BADER has never been to Ikea.
Darren Bader
