Darren Bader and Li Ming
Mind the Gap
By Art Matters, Hangzhou, China
Curated by Sun Man
By Art Matters is pleased to present Mind the Gap, a two-person exhibition of artists Darren Bader and Li Ming. These two artists live and work far apart from each other—in New York, NY and Hangzhou, China—and never actually met in person while preparing the exhibition over the course of the past three years, and alongside a worldwide pandemic. Their dialogue ping-ponged fitfully through shared fragments of their artistic creation on WeChat, where the entropy of translated language, the time lag, and the increasing anxiety of being an artist during a pandemic, unfolded the multifaceted meaning of the word “gap.” Mind the Gap highlights the artists’ humor, wit, and poetry through 70 works and series by Bader and Li, along with a new collaboration.
Darren Bader (b. 1978, Bridgeport, CT) studied filmmaking and art history at NYU (BFA, 2000). He lives and works in New York, NY and in transit. His exhibitions are often collaborative in nature, exploring and questioning the interconnectedness of seemingly disparate objects through complex (re)arrangements, surprise juxtapositions, and absurd associations. Institutional solo exhibitions include fruits, vegetables; fruit and vegetable salad, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY (2020); (@mined_oud), Madre, Naples, Italy (2017–18); Meaning and Difference, The Power Station, Dallas, TX (2017); chess: relatives, High Line Art, New York, NY (2017); light (and) regret, Kölnischer Kunstverein, Cologne, Germany (2015); Where Is a Bicycle’s Vagina (and Other Inquiries), or Around the Samovar, 1857, Oslo, Norway (2012); and Images, MoMA PS1, New York, NY (2012).