Too long over-determined by market forces, we've come to think that
visual artists merely serve the purpose of making things. Terence Koh
has no such interest in sublimating his eroticized magical thinking
into surrogate objects of desire -- he is after pure, unmediated
sensation and understands the true nature of art as that which occupies
the ineffable realm of the senses. Wielding the elemental with shamanic
authority, Koh can transform any element, from a wisp of smoke to a ray
of light, to meditate upon the transitory while mediating the eternal.
Somewhere here, between the blinding and the immersive, at once a
sensory deprivation and an overload, this huckster, diva, conceptualist
and hedonist weaves impossible truths that are in various parts ritual,
operatic drama, prank, ceremony and entertainment spectacle. From his
early work as asianpunkboy circa 1999, Koh has had an uncanny ability to
think with his cock to elaborate and navigate hypothetical aesthetic
spaces like autonomous dream zones to conjure the sublime in ways highly
erotic and terrifying. When he told us about I Want A Little Sugar In
My Bowl, an exhibition featuring artists he thinks of as sexy, we
wanted to know just what he thinks is sexy. With no less enigma,
abstraction, exoticism, provocation and vanity than he brings to any
media he works in, here's what Terence had to say.
"Narcissism is sexy. If art is often about objects of desire, as an artist, the most important place to start is by looking in the mirror. Artists are desirable. Art is not desirable. Desire should be towards feelings, not material things. Artists have the most feelings of anyone in our culture; that is why they are so sexy.
What makes a sexy artist? Quietness.
But the art definitely makes them sexier.
I want to keep the specific artists I'm in love with secret, but David Wojnarowicz has to be the centerpiece for any consideration of what it means to be a sexy artist.
I don't think of Louise Bourgeois as sexy, but I'd definitely like to fuck her.
Sexiness is very precise. When you see a work of art that shakes you, your whole body trembles, but the real energy is focused in your organs -- you feel it in your groin.
Bad art gives you a boner. Good art makes you tingle.
Asianpunkboy was explicitly about desire in a way that the art of Terence Koh isn't. Desire is how and why I did what I did. It started as a fanzine while I was in art school up in Vancouver as a way of wrangling people. Much like the show I have just curated I Want A Little Sugar In My Bowl, asainpunkboy is a way to meet sexy artists in the professional sense. Being a curator is more controlling than being a doting fan.
Power is sexy, especially when it is about domination. Unfortunately, however, there are no art dealers I find to be sexy. The more powerful I get, the sexier I will seem to be, but you can never get sexier -- it's all downhill the moment you breathe your first air from your mom's twat.
All the artists who have never had a solo show and want one are very sexy.
The ROCOCO is sexy.
The AMERICAN EXPRESS BLACK CARD now launching in Canada is extremely desirable. It's bigger than the Platinum Card, and I'm a total size-queen."
[From top to bottom] Terence Koh: "Self Portrait," 2006, Courtesy of the artist and Peres Projects, Berlin and Los Angeles. David Wojnarowicz: "Untitled," 1988-89, Courtesy of P.P.O.W, New York.
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