Darren Bader's AR Sculptures Travel Across Italy via MACRO's Bootlicker Suite

The MACRO museum in Rome launches "Bootlicker Suite," a traveling augmented reality exhibition by American sculptor Darren Bader (born 1978, Bridgeport, Connecticut). The show is part of the SUPPLEMENTO section of Museo per l'Immaginazione Preventiva, curated by MACRO's artistic director Luca Lo Pinto to explore the museum's renovated architecture and spaces. Fifty-five works, including Bader's sculptures, are designed for mobile devices (optimized for iOS iPhones) and activated by visitors via QR codes on posters in participating cities. Starting in Rome on April 12, the exhibition migrates to Galleria Franco Noero in Turin, MEGA in Milan, bruno in Venice, and Fondazione Morra Greco in Naples. The sculptures, three years in development, originated from Bader's 2018 encounter with artist Scott Mendes in Venice; their exchange and Mendes's "Notturni" watercolors also inspired Bader's project for the 58th Venice Biennale, "Scott Mendes’s Venice." Bader, who studied directing and art history at NYU and works in New York, creates conceptual art that materially and linguistically critiques the art world and its contradictions.