“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.
Listen: distributing swords is no basis for a system of government 
12mm: the violence inherent in the system 
15mm: the violence inherent in the syste 
24mm: the violence inherent in the system 
A Capitalist Smear Tactic 
Take a turn: executive officer for the week 
Oh there you go again, bringing class into it 
hangin’ on to outdated imperialist dogma 
An anarcho-syndicalist commune 
Three way: help, I’m being repressed 
Don’t fool yourself: a self perpetuating autocracy 
a mandate from the masses
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.