Darren Bader’s art touches on an impressively broad range of themes – from the ontological status of the art object to the cultural influence of the internet, from the history of the readymade to the role of language in Conceptual art, from global consumer capitalism to the 21st-century art market, from the divine to the abject. For his presentation at the Biennale Arte 2019, Bader has developed an augmented reality work, available through a mobile app. Functioning throughout the Arsenale and the Central Pavilion and also further afield, the work – titled Scott Mendes’s VENICE! – adds a layer of reality (or unreality) to the city of Venice, a site that is already overwhelmingly saturated with aesthetic, historical and sensorial information for the visitors who throng there annually.
