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Lot Essay
Terence Koh's oeuvre employs a diverse range of media, including drawing, sculpture, video, performance and the internet. Originally working under the alias 'asianpunkboy', Koh began working under his real name in 2004. Since then, Terence Koh's iconoclastic sculptures have been born of queer youth culture, luxurious decadence, memory and fantasy.
Executed in 2006, Crackhead is composed of more than two-hundred glass vitrines positioned and stacked as a singular, monumental installation. In almost every vitrine, the Chinese-born New York-based artist has placed an object made of plaster - namely a cast of the artist's own head in varying degrees of decay. Whilst the influence of his artistic forebears including Marcel Duchamp, Andy Warhol and Joseph Beuys is often cited, the principle focus in Koh's work is the artist's own enigmatic persona. In Crackhead, as in many of the artist's other works, Koh is both muse and author.
With each encased element coated in black behind the expansive panes of glass, Crackhead is monochromatic to the extreme; its monumental scale further adding to the visual impact of Koh's signature 'monochromania'. Cumulatively, the vitrines compose a dazzling environment that explores themes of death, sexuality, identity, excess, pleasure and the history of art. Crackhead is a work that requires the viewer's active apprehension and immersion into its labyrinth of visual conundrums. Filled with binary notions of lust and death, pleasure and pain, Crackhead is an epic work that is constantly in flux.
Executed in 2006, Crackhead is composed of more than two-hundred glass vitrines positioned and stacked as a singular, monumental installation. In almost every vitrine, the Chinese-born New York-based artist has placed an object made of plaster - namely a cast of the artist's own head in varying degrees of decay. Whilst the influence of his artistic forebears including Marcel Duchamp, Andy Warhol and Joseph Beuys is often cited, the principle focus in Koh's work is the artist's own enigmatic persona. In Crackhead, as in many of the artist's other works, Koh is both muse and author.
With each encased element coated in black behind the expansive panes of glass, Crackhead is monochromatic to the extreme; its monumental scale further adding to the visual impact of Koh's signature 'monochromania'. Cumulatively, the vitrines compose a dazzling environment that explores themes of death, sexuality, identity, excess, pleasure and the history of art. Crackhead is a work that requires the viewer's active apprehension and immersion into its labyrinth of visual conundrums. Filled with binary notions of lust and death, pleasure and pain, Crackhead is an epic work that is constantly in flux.