Terence Koh

Do no doubt the dangerous of my butterfly song

Terence Koh’s Untitled (C45) reconsiders painting as the ultimate expression of intimacy. Reminiscent of Andy Warhol’s piss paintings and De Kooning’s violently painted sex symbols, Koh approaches his canvas with the passion of an S&M lover. Marred with brutal puncture holes, and splattered with beer and urine, Untitled (C45) bears the marks of both abjection and arousal. In its battered form, Untitled (C45) exudes a disquieting beauty, merging the territories of cruelty and seduction.

Terrence Koh’s Do no doubt the dangerous of my butterfly song is a model of seduction. Placed inside a glass case and accompanied by a soundtrack, his assemblage exudes a precious delicacy, enshrining ephemera of personal and queer significance. Hair, ash, and a butterfly are composed in frail arrangement, their ephemeral qualities hinting narratives of vulnerability, loss, and violence. Combining formalism with the deeply intimate, Koh’s work conveys a quiet restraint, pointing to the structured isolation of individual existence and the fragility of human experience.

Standing as a white cube within the white cube of the gallery, Terence Koh’s Medusa has the outward appearance of polished respectability. Through the door of his structure, however, it is revealed as a WC of iniquity, a literal closeting of desire. Decked out in dirty black, with rows of phallus-laden religious icons, and satanic plumbing fixtures, Koh’s toilet stall is both urinal and confessional, a smutty cupboard where seduction and transcendence are gleefully indulged.

Terence Koh’s Cokehead is a cast bust of Hermes, the Greek god of travel and guider of souls to the land of the dead. Replicating the crystalline lure of cocaine, the sculpture is coated with diamond dust and sugar, a metaphoric veneer of sweetness, temptation, and indulgence. Encased within a glass vitrine, Cokehead stands as a relic of forbidden pleasure, his nymph-like form suggests sexual enticement and immortal power mounted on a base of powdering decay.

These Decades that We Never Sleep, Black Drums

These Decades that We Never Sleep, Black Drums

These Decades that We Never Sleep, Black Drums

These Decades that We Never Sleep, Black Light

Terrence Koh’s sculptures are born of queer youth culture and luxurious decadence. Exuding a magnetic sensuality, These Decades that We Never Sleep, Black Drums is an object of obsession, its ebony coils trailing with enticement, visually echoing waves of noise. Luring with its swarthy depths, …Black Drums creates a suggestive void: of memory and fantasy, drawing connotations of art history, gothic subculture, and fetish gear. Using raw materials of cloth, metal, and plaster, Koh’s sculpture beacons with tactility, mirroring yearning and loss as physical desire.

Crowing with early-hour neon glory, Terrence Koh’s Big White Cock is everything its title suggests! Illuminating with greasy innuendos of back-alley sex shops and mega-bucket chicken shacks, Koh’s electric sign pulsates as a high-design icon glamorising the art of slumming it. Addressing issues of race, gender, and sexuality, Koh turns the coded language of sub-culture into a fetishised logo of duplicity. In sexual terms a ‘chicken’ may be a gay teen or Chinese prostitute, but sometimes a cock is just a rooster!

Taking the form of a boudoir chandelier, Terrence Koh’s These Decades that We Never Sleep, Black Light hangs with a tempting anticipation; its heavy weight dangles, both dangerous and beguiling, dripping opulent crystals and bijou. Rather than illuminating, the sculpture’s deadened black surface promises to devour. Flirting between pleasure and pain, lust and death, Koh offers a dark romanticism, filled with apprehension and possibility.

Untitled (Medusa)