Cyclone Baffle
Ryder Richards
Backdoor Biennial
Dirty Dark Place, Kyle, Texas [link]
May 6-27, 2018
Reception: 12-4 PM, May 6th
Withdrawing into the middle-class, lonely man hobby of shop DIY mentality—instead of doing anything meaningful—Richards has grown increasingly infatuated with the effluent tide of YouTube videos on “how to hack your Shop-Vac.” Naturally, this withdrawal is both sincere and a socio-political subterfuge, or a shibboleth, from which Richards can snipe peripheral commentary on populism, xenophobia, and alienation from progressive discourse.
Press: Dirty Dark Place brings contemporary art to a corner of the Kyle Flea Market
Dirty Dark Place (DDP) is an artist-run project space currently located in the Kyle Flea Market in Kyle, Texas. Our mission is to collaborate with Texas-based, contemporary artists to develop programming that challenges the dominant structures and strictures of exhibiting art. Picking up where our patron saint Dave Hickey left off with his Austin-based gallery, A Clean, Well-Lighted Place, we are dedicated to disrupting the hierarchical and socioeconomic systems that shape access and patronage of contemporary art. DDP is an experiment in community that willfully mismatches place and programming as a means to both incite artists and to provoke new audiences.
The Backdoor Biennial is a 12-month exhibition program of contemporary art, curated and presented by Dirty Dark Place. Programming begins January and will run through December 2018. Each month a different Texas-based artists will create an exhibition, taking over Dirty Dark Place’s current project space in the Kyle Flea Market.
Deeply skeptical of the selection mechanisms at work in contemporary curatorial practice, the Backdoor Biennial will not have a proscriptive relationship to the exhibiting artists. Rather, artists will work in a collaborative environment and be encouraged to take risks, explore new forms, and work with the site and the market. Moreover, a schedule of supplemental programming will be offered including readings, performances, and screenings. At the end of the year, a catalog will be produced by Cattywampus Press to document and preserve the Backdoor Biennial.
More than a critique of biennials, art fairs, and the elitist impulse embedded in the institutional presentation of contemporary art, Dirty Dark Place’s, Backdoor Biennial, will forge common ground and introduce new forms to new audiences.