Dave Choi 

‘Sculptures on Walls’

Opening Reception: Saturday, October 16, 2 - 6 pm

Saturday, October 16 - Sunday, November 21, 2021

286 Stanhope Street, Ground Floor

Brooklyn, NY 11237

SARDINE is pleased to present ‘Sculptures on Walls’, a solo exhibition by artist Dave Choi. ‘Sculptures on Walls’ opens with a reception on Saturday, October 16 from 2 to 6 pm and will run through November 21, 2021. This is Choi’s first solo show with SARDINE.

On the occasion of ‘Sculptures on Walls’, SARDINE asked Artist Joseph Whitt to introduce the work:

Dave Choi’s secret weapons are humor and absurdity. Dave Choi’s works are characterized, firstly, by joy. They carry an apocalyptic humor, which is to parenthetically say, the humor of the body, the joke of mortality. For me, they giggle at our shared circumstance of death. His sculptures are almost always of bodies, or of heads. And the crudity and additive-ness of their construction emphasizes, in the mind of the viewer, the realities of erosion and impermanence. His use of glue simulates or implies skin. It is often used to preserve or contain, much like a resin, much like skin itself does for real bodies, and for what we might assume is a soul inside. Choi’s works are very soulful. They carry the kind of soulfulness that feels hard won. These sculptures have been, as my father likes to say, “rode hard and put up wet.” Whether riffing on Rodin’s “Thinker,” or the archetypal forms of a geisha or the bust of a nobleman, these pieces feel as if they are exhausted and destroyed by a hangover, while thanking God for the blessing that was last night. They are irreverent towards "the classics," in order to enliven them. They reveal a body crudely, to say something about the fragility of heart. They are, like one of my favorite sculptures of his, a heavy metal hand gesture by someone certain but not stagnant, alone but not lonely, full of gratitude to be alive. - JW

Dave Choi lives and works in Ridgewood, NY. He received a BFA from Longwood College in 1993 and an MFA from Mason Gross School of Arts, Rutgers University in 2001. His work has been included in shows at The Hogar Collection, Gavin Brown’s Enterprise, Invisible Exports, Orgy Park, Glenlily Grounds, and at DM Contemporary.

SARDINE is located on the ground floor of 286 Stanhope Street between Wyckoff and Irving Avenues in Bushwick, Brooklyn, one block from the Dekalb L train and near the Knickerbocker M. This is the second project the gallery has done since it shuttered for the pandemic. Please be mindful of social distancing in our small space and please wear a mask. SARDINE will be open by appointment only for the time being. For more information, please visit sardinebk.com. Contact: Lacey Fekishazy at 914.805.1974 or sardinebk@gmail.com.