Neha Choksi

Missing Monument I-IV, Cup, Sprue, Gate, Vent, Base
2014
Solid bronze cast by the lost wax method, teak wood


I, bronze element 8 x 5 x 8 in., wood element 12 x 9 x 3 in., weight 10.5 kg
II, bronze element 8.25 x 5.75 x 6.125 in., wood element 12.25 x 9.75 x 2.75 in., weight 14 kg
III, bronze element 7 x 4.375 x 9 in., wood element 11.5 x 8.5 x 3.125 in., weight 9 kg
IV, bronze element 11.25 x 5.75 x 6.75 in., wood element 13 x 9.75 x 3.25 in., weight 12 kg

ARTIST TEXT

For the four sculptures in the Missing Monuments series, the artist gathers the elements of the lost-wax process of making bronze sculptures into self-referential totems of the methodology.  The Cup, Sprue, Gate, & Vent are the parts of the production usually removed in fashioning the final sculpture.  Here these very elements come together in a series of modest ensembles and are suggestive of the missing monuments they might bring into being.  These charming sculptures are purposefully mysterious and elemental.  Their shape seems to have a lost indiscernible purpose, a supposition bolstered by the aged patina on a rough bronze surface. They repeat a shape hearkening back to an Ur sculpture, but what is it?  The size of the pouring cup is monumental, the wood base is a sober pedestal top, but the monument is missing. This is the end-game for lost wax sculpture, where the elements themselves resolve into a sculpture both illuminating and mystifying.  Choksi’s works have often derived their meaning from presenting acts of absenting and this series of bronze sculptures is no different.



From the Shrinking and Disappearing Series, 2005-present.

The Shrinking and Disappearing series is an examination of the structure of making, especially of making sculpture and space. Often, as in Double Negative, the work utilizes a chosen form for a mold that with each successive sculpture deflates and evacuates itself like a paradoxically gravity-bound balloon. The formwork diminishes to a point of failure: eventually, it forms nothing. Sometimes the process eliminates the task of creation, concentrating instead on the processes involved, drawing attention both to the urge to make, to unmake, and to eliminate.

RELATED WORKS

Time Together and Time Apart, 2023
Dismantling, 2017
Prior Presence series, 2015
Dogear, 2013
Double Negative (Suspended), 2012
Echo of the Inside, 2011
The Inside is Perpetual, 2011
Shrinking, Patchwork Tiger, 2005