“a mere appendage”
solo exhibition by Ryder Richards
Studio Kura
Fukuoka, Japan
June 22-23, 2019
Drawing tools purchased locally from large companies, Richards’ drawings consider the universal trend of DIY. In Japan the common is uncommon, though familiar in form and function. By making meticulous drawings the tools are elevated -fetishized- and granted a status (or agency) from which to open conversations about labor, cultural production, and the precarity that haunts the labor class.
In America Richards has been drawing tools and creating art installations from Home Depot products for several years. His interest lies in the consumers ability to purchase DIY equipment as a means of self-empowerment, building online communities through Youtube tutorials, and the contradictions inherent to these practices.
Ryder Richards is a Dallas-based artist, writer, and freelance curator. He co-curated Boom Town at the Dallas Museum of Art, directed The Cube in Roswell, New Mexico as part of a one-year artist-in-residence program, and co-developed the RJP Nomadic Gallery. He has shown work in London, Germany, Spain, China, Greece, Japan, and across the United States. Ryder has been a member/founder of several collaborative art groups including The Art Foundation and Culture Laboratory, as well as participating in the Texas Biennial 2011 and 2013 and the Dallas Biennial 2012 and 2014.
Ryder taught college art for ten years, travels, attends art residencies, and writes the occasional art review, which prompted him to found EUTOPIA: Contemporary Art Reviews. Currently, he is creates a podcast, Let Us THINK About It, and daily insights at Belly Button Lint.