dm contemporary

dm contemporary is pleased to present Fables of the Reconstruction, a group exhibition curated by Joseph Whitt, featuring the work of Dave Choi, Eddie Chu, Kevin Lips, and Clifford Owens. The exhibition opens on Friday, September 25th and remains on view through October 31st, 2015.

This exhibition showcases four artists whose practices employ an elemental, almost alchemical approach to materials in service of re-imagining traditional forms. In the works of Dave Choi and Eddie Chu, painting and sculpture emerge from purely additive acts that blur and (quite literally) bury each object's origin of construction. Disarmingly child-like at a glance, these pieces become contextually baroque with careful scrutiny. In the drawings and photographs of Clifford Owens, vernacular materials, such as coffee, Vaseline and dust, belie the most elegant of gestures. And in the wall sculpture and drawings of Kevin Lips, repetition of imagery becomes both a meditation on the aspirations of Modernism and also a struggle to wrest oneself from its shadow. "For each of these artists, the concept of reconstruction, of constantly upending a practice, is an integral part of the creative act," says curator Joseph Whitt. "These works are alive in a way that I struggle to describe. The works seem to struggle themselves, out of a wish to transcend the very means of their own making."

After accepting a residency at The Glasgow School of Fine Arts and receiving his Master's degree in Fine Arts from Rutgers University, Dave Choi was a 2003 resident of the Vermont Studio Center before arriving in New York. His work and performances have been widely showcased at venues as diverse as Gavin Brown's Enterprise, The Whitney Museum of American Art, Rare Gallery, The Hogar Collection, Sumotang Gallery, Rutgers University's MGSA Art Gallery, the Bridge Art Fair in New York City and the Aqua Art Fair in Miami, and many others. He currently lives and works in Brooklyn.

Since graduating from the Rhode Island School of Design (BFA, 1998) and Hunter College (MFA, 2003), Eddie Chu has exhibited widely in the United States and abroad, including group shows at Swiss Institute and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. He has been nominated for the Christoph Merian Stiftung residency in Basel, Switzerland and has received a KACAL honorarium. Chu currently lives and works in Brooklyn, where he participates in the emerging Bushwick and Ridgewood artist communities and is an active member of Bushwick Open Studios.

Kevin Lips is an artist currently based in New York City. After attending the University of Iowa and graduating with a B.F.A (Honors) with a concentration in Ceramics, he received the Stanley Grant for Undergraduate Research and spent a year studying and working in China and Thailand. He was recently awarded a Jerome Foundation Emerging Artist Grant and spent the summer of 2015 creating a body of large scale sculptural work in Minnesota. Lips has shown in New York at PPOW Gallery and Interstate Projects, in France at the Centre Ceramique Contemporain, and in Germany at Galerie Metzger, among others.

Clifford Owens has exhibited both nationally and internationally in many venues of note, including the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Home (Manchester, UK), MoMA/PS1, the Walker Art Center, The Studio Museum of Harlem, Invisible Exports, and the Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, to name just a few. Articles and reviews about his practice have appeared in Art in America, The New York Times, Artforum, Modern Painters, The Los Angeles Times, and many other publications. He is based in New York City, and currently teaches at Virginia Commonwealth University and Yale University.

Joseph Whitt is an artist, writer, and independent curator living and working in New York City. His work and performances have been featured at many notable venues, including MoMA/PS1, Eyebeam, PPOW Gallery, Deitch Projects, CRG Gallery, Interstate Projects, and Envoy Enterprises, among others; and he has received reviews in The New York Times, Flash Art, and Sculpture. His writings have appeared in Art Papers, ArtUS, Useless Magazine and K48; and over the last three years, five chapbooks of his poetry have been published by T.M.I. Ltd., a Brooklyn-based independent press.