The best thing about a Darren Bader “work” is that you may not know it’s a “work” at all. It just “is,” and often barely perceptible as such, like the infamous two burritos on a windowsill at MoMA PS1, left to rot in the sun, un-labeled. Or the inconspicuous donation boxes at the 2014 Whitney Biennial; one was for donations to “nothing,” and the other for “something.”

By moving through the gallery from left to right, the urge to go back and look at everything again only deepens. Fold marks vary in weight, like contours on a map. Borders appear and then vanish. Paper is no longer without feature but integral to the room itself, probing the gallery for points of surprise and unexpected change. The eye runs along a pencil line that begins with a cut and ends with a tear. And as cool air blows through the room it causes soft tissue to rustle, twitch and then subside, mapping paper as a active material regardless of whether it is blank, fixed or fluid.