MARCELO KRASILCIC PHOTOGRAPHS TERENCE KOH FOR THE NEW UNITED BAMBOO CAMPAIGN

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decorations by http://www.confettisystem.com/
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WHILE THE ARTWORLD IS AT THE OPENING OF ART BASEL MIAMI BEACH, TERENCE AND GARRICK HAVE LUNCH AT JERRY'S DELI

TERENCE DOES LEON!

Terence Koh and Agustin Perez Rubio entering the exhibition

The Whole Family

Terence's temple-labyrinth-dark room of dark columns

Terence's Tomb Stone

Joan Morey and Manuel Segade contemplating Terence Koh's work

The Temple of Golde Piss

GOD

The End of My Life as a Rabbit in Love

Topacio Fresh, Terence Koh, Pablo de la Barra

The Whole Family: Koh's parents, Mr. de la Barra and Topacio Fresh

Garrick Gott and Jeppe Laursen

Tolo Cañelas djing

Javier Peres and Brandon Herman

Micheal Ashton and Hugh Bigham, Guillermo Espinosa in the background

Aitor Sarabia

MUSAC's hot staff

Terence resting after exhibition

5am afterparty at Deluxe

Love for eternity
Terence Koh

On September 27 MUSAC is to unveil Love for eternity, a foray into the unique creative universe of Chinese-Canadian artist Terence Koh (Beijing, China, 1980), where cultures and identities blend with influences from post-minimalism and 1970s body art to create a personal cosmos governed by decadence and deliberate excess, providing the onlooker moments of fragile beauty. This is Koh’s first solo exhibition in Spain, having shown previously in Europe at the Wiener Secession, Kunsthalle Zurich or Frankfurt Schirn Museum; and after his major individual exhibition at the Whitney Museum in New York. Love for eternity will allow the public to revisit the artist’s creative career from his early works signed under the alias asianpunkboy, to the present, with an ad hoc installation created for MUSAC and two performances on the opening night.

Koh’s work is the result of an assemblage of the cultures and identities deeply engrained in this heir of Joseph Beuys’ post-conceptualism, where art and life go hand in hand and where mysticism and religion take on a crucial importance when it comes to appraising varying beliefs within a globalised mesh. Koh is not reluctant to intermixing the broad range of his baggage: on the one hand Asian and transcendental, captured in Chinese opera, ideograms and expressions of an ancestral past; with the newest forms of expression such as music, design and subversive identity games on the other. His work, rich in queer references, acquires a degree of abstraction between two poles where it is not always straightforward to determine whether he is talking about the past or the future, sex or gender, mysticism or hedonism. All of this in an execution defined by secrecy and mystery, masquerade and even numerology.

Koh’s clear references to other artists from the world of performance, such as Man Ray, Marcel Duchamp, Joseph Beuys, Bruce Nauman or Rober Gober place him line with a specific discourse, though he is also influenced by the 1990s exploration of male identity, the so-called Male Trouble, as a poetic revisitation of those forms of expression where the artist stands as an instrument between action and object.

On Love for eternity
Love for Eternity is a vast exhibition, coving over 1200 m2, devoted to a review of Koh’s main works, from those signed as asianpunkboy, up to the present. The viewer will be enticed to plunge into a succession of rooms holding installations whose objects, lighting and composition generate a sense of fragility and whiteness; or their opposites, such as the Baroque black of certain pieces endowed with a compelling visual force. The installations will provide an essentially sensorial experience, where mysticism meets the underground.

On entering the exhibition, opposite the poster designed for the occasion by the artist, the viewer will walk down a corridor leading to Koh’s first installation, The Whole Family (2003). A number of objects, figures and images set around an all-white room bear witness to the artist’s spatial, subversive and sensorial inquiry.

The next room is the exact opposite – entirely black. It holds an installation of new and existing pieces that share the colour black. Bronzes, black hair drums, lamps made out of secret materials, dark vitrines with music that cannot be heard or is “only for butterflies”, a scorched Pinocchio... In addition, the artist will use this room to house an installation of 28 vitrine towers in dark glass which, alongside the black and brunt-out pieces, will symbolise the destruction caused by the 28 bombs dropped on the city of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War. Here, all Koh’s poetics will revolve around war and destruction, through individual pieces, each with their own identity, that together take on the form of an installation with a whole new meaning.

In the adjoining room, a golden light will fill the entire space, swathing a number of black pieces (GOD, 2007 and MI + T, July 1, 2007, 2007) arranged as a still life where the light and the works conjure the mysticism of religion and human beings’ fleeting existence.

The fourth room will hold a new piece created specifically for the exhibition. A large vitrine, made up of over 300 horizontal units, will fill a large section of the room from wall to wall. The vitrine will be empty for the most part, though some of the sections will contain some white sculptures such as bull’s horns and bullfighter’s spears painted white, representing the essence of Spain’s culture of death and festive spirit. Looking through these vitrines, the public will catch a glimpse of the installation The end of my life as a rabbit in love (2007) where, by way of a funeral celebration in white (bearing in mind that for many cultures white is the colour of mourning), a set of sculpted spheres reference the idea of yin and yang, a play on positives and negatives, the body and its disappearance, or the state of partnership and love.

Finally, in MUSAC’s largest hall, the artist will display a subtle installation, produced specifically for this space, where darkness and silence play a leading role in a piece that combines the essences of fire, encounters and the ephemeral.

Love for eternity will be rounded off with two of Koh’s existing performances, scheduled for the opening night, Mein Tod Mein Tod (2007) and The end of my life as a rabbit in love (2007).

These five major installations full of forms and objects in black, white and gold will cast a thread covering a number of episodes in Koh’s life and work, where he makes a permanent display of his multifaceted indentity:Asian-Canadian-Catholic-Buddhist-gay futuristic-ancestral, young or mature... All in all, a blend of mixtures that provides all the references required to address the decadence and fragility of human kind, our fears and our triumphs, joy and pain all at once. Love for eternity is the passage into a personal universe crammed with Koh’s wide ranging and diverse cultural references.

http://www.musac.es

MILENA, DEAN AND TERENCE HAVE SOME DRINKS AT CHATEAU MARMONT BEFORE TERENCE'S EXHIBITION AT JAVIER'S

Dean Sameshima and Terence Koh


Milena Muzquiz and Terence Koh

MEANWHILE TERENCE VISITS TEOTIHUACAN AND CELEBRATES WITH AN EXHIBITION IN LA 5 YEARS OF LOVE STORY WITH JAVIER

Vanesa Fernandez, editor of Celeste Magazine, being photographed while photographing Terence Koh as captain ahab a golden buddhist in the pyramids of Teotihuacan.


hello deer

this is terence koh

my first show was with this gallery almost 5 years ago WOW

may 10, 2008 that's gonna bee five years of love between javier peres and me

i remember coming to chung king road for the first time and seeing the little street with red lanterns

i remember falling in love with the street immediately

i remember walking into the gallery and thinking it was perfect and magical

i remember sleeping on the couch of the gallery on the second floor while installing because javier couldn't really afford to pay for my motel (yep motel, not hotel)

i remember eating the mostest yummy steamed shrimp with my boyfriend garrick and javier at the restaurant across the street

i remember driving with javier for the first time in his huge silver jeep on the highways of la way pass midnight at about 180 miles per hour and he was swigging whiskey from a silver flask and i was screaming at him that we were both completely going to die that night

i remember walking around with javier in the seedy pet district of downtown los angeles trying to find two perfect white budgeries for my show and finding them and then going to eat vietnamese desserts right after to congratulate ourselves

i rememeber realizing after spending 8 days in la that waking up every day felt like the most strange deja vu because it was always sunny every day every day

i remember javier contacting me via email for the first time saying immediately he wanted to do a show with me in his new gallery in la and i was very confused because i didn't have a single clue what being an artist was

i remember my first studio visit with javier in my tiny tiny apartment in chinatown in new york and it was night and we sat on my big white table which took up the whole room and i showed him a little white jewerly case with a gold capital M letter stuck on the top and when you opened it there was the thinnest sliver of glass (the kind you use for looking at specimens under microscopes) and it had a gold capital E stuck on it, my ME box and javier said he would buy it for 20 buck and that was the first thing he bought from me

i remember the very first time i met javier was in new york where he standing next to a bed in this little tiny hotel room for the scope art fair and i was there with garrick and i immediately thought javier was someone i could trust and love forever and was going to be a friend for life, and i never felt that way before

i remember every single shopping trip i made with javier buying clothes together, one of our many naughty vices

i remember waiting for javier in the prada shop in london for more than an hour after the store was closed and the whole staff waiting around in the store and looking at me and i was feeling terribly uncomfortable and hating javier every single second because i was waiting for javier to come use his credit card to buy me a mink jacket cause my credit card could not take the 13,500 pounds the jacket cost and then forgiving him afterwards cause it was the most expensive thing i bought to date and it felt great wearing it even though i am vegetarian for ethical reasons

i remember every single morning with javier as the sun came up because we were up all night and hating the sunlight and wished i had sunglasses and borrowing his sunglasses twice

i remember in mykonos, greece baptising javier for his birthday in the dark night of the greek sea, while i was wearing a custom coat made out of about 200 chinese hairs and he was completely naked and i thought that he was my baby son

i remember the absolutely terrifying sound of of 21 shots from a gun that javier fired in the basement space of his gallery for the main piece of our first show, which was 21 identical prints of a lovely young boy on purple paper

i remember very well cycling on my bike round and round at the same spot for about an hour under the yellow glow of street lights near my apartment on henry street and talking to javier on my cell phone when we found out i was in the whitney biennial 3 months after my first show with him

i remember too the 3 months after the opening of our first show when we only sold 2 sculptures and javier and i felt completely miserable cause we thought we would strike it big with money

i rememeber telling javier he was crazy when he said that my sculptures for the whole family show should sell at 1000 dollars a piece and i told him to get a grip and that he should really sell them for 300 dollars or something like that

i remember how excited we were when phil and shelley aarons (they are forever my other daddy and mommy) bought the first thing from the show, which was the owl shelf with the big fake diamonds for eyes

i remember being cramped in many many many small bathrooms with javier all around the world and especially the time javier, dash and me made out at passerby in the bathroom the night of my whitney biennial

i remember a few times when i was drunk horny and high and i wanted javier to fuck me doggy style even though we have never had sex but we like to say we doo

i remember or know that javier has always had a crush on my boyfriend

i remember that javier had a good sense of style when i first met him with his cheap t-shirts and american apparel jeans but that after 5 years of shopping with him i have given him an acquired taste for the very best and now his sense of style is absolutely low key while being strikingly fabulous

i remember driving in a cab in london with javier my DADDY (one of my nicknames for him) a few years ago when we were doing the frieze art fair and telling him that we would know we would have made it when we finally could afford to stay at claridges and now that is our favorite hotel in the world

i remember the time when i caught chicken pox for the first time at the age of 27! and i was crushing in his la apartment and he brought me honey to make a drawing cause i was going mental being stuck in his apartment 24/7

i remember the time when javier stole a blond haired boy from me at around 8am in the morning when i was totally crazy for him and they both secretly went off to have sex with each other instead and i don't think i will ever forgive him for that

i remember javier helping me to glue and paint the sculptures for our first show together in the basement of the gallery at night every night till opening night

i remember 5 years ago when garrick and i were so broke that a good day for us was when we could afford to buy an egg to eat with our pack of 50cent rice which was flavored with free soy sauce packets

i remember that night when javier was having sex with a fucking hot stud in the basement of the la gallery and i came down and i asked if i could join in and the guy wasn't really into it, but javier said please let terence blow your cock and i blew the stud muffin's cock

i remember emailing javier to never forget that my art will always have the the power to give him more passion for life than sex and coke and he immediately replied back NEVER WILL!

i remember shopping for poppers in berlin with javier ass i was too shy to get them myself and when we finally found this sex store in schoenberg we went crazy cause it had 1000s of dvd porn and javier and i dropped about 3000 euro in ten minutes buying the greatest porn ever and i still jerk off to them whenever i think i am running out of art ideas

i rememeber always being really jealous when javier would find a new boyfriend because i knew that meant that for a few weeks he wouldn't pay attention to me as much and i also remember feeling completely evil and selfish when he would break up with a boyfriend and i would feel extremely subconsiously happy cause he would pay all his attention to me again

i remember almost all the countless times i told javier i was going to be the artist that would make the next evolutionary jump in not just art history but history for our millenium and then feeling about half an hour later that i really should work on my modesty skills

i remember the time in leon, spain when we were having our usual late all night discussions and we were talking about what would go on my epitaph on my tombstone and then going to take a piss and it suddenly came to me when the yellow stream was coming out of my dick what it was going to be, and running to javier and telling him it would say LOVE FOR ETERNITY

i will forever and forever and forever remember the magic javier and me created for our first show in that tiny mighty gallery on chung king road in chinatown, los angeles almost five years ago


hugs love hugs
terence koh

new york city, march 13, 2008 sometime after midnight


Javier Peres is pleased to announce Terence KOH's third solo exhibition in Los Angeles, "The Whole Family." Terence Koh (b. 1980, China. Lives in NY, Beijing and Berlin) will be present for the opening.

"The Whole Family" will be on view at Peres Projects (969 Chung King Road, Los Angeles) through June 21, 2008. Hours: Tuesday through Saturday, from 11:00 A.M. to 6:00 P.M and by appointment.