Terence Koh

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Terence Koh (born in Beijing, China, 1977) was raised in Vancouver, British Columbia, and lives in New York City. He is a Chinese-American artist and received his Bachelor degree from the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design, Vancouver. He was also known as "asianpunkboy", though it appears that name has been retired.

Terence Koh creates handmade books and zines, prints, photographs, sculptures, performances, and installations. Much of his diverse work involves queer, punk, and pornographic sensibilities.

Koh’s work has been exhibited internationally at galleries and museums such as the MuHKA Museum [1] in Antwerp, Wien Secession [2] in Austria, the Whitney Museum of American Art [3] in New York, Kunsthalle Zürich [4] in Switzerland, and The Royal Academy [5] in London. His work has been featured in a solo exhibition at Art Basel [6], and is included in several prominent collections including the Saatchi Gallery [7] and the Judith Rothschild Foundation [8]. He is represented by Peres Projects [9] in Los Angeles.

Terrence Koh’s work occupies a space between physicality and desire.^{[citation needed]} Immersed in a highly personalised vocabulary, his sculptures, installations and light motifs suggest evasive narratives of seduction, emotional fragility and lost love.^{[citation needed]} Often incorporating allusions to sexuality, ethnicity and adolescence, Koh’s work engages with identity as an existential construction, driven by both pursuit of pleasure and certain mortality.^{[citation needed]}

Comprised from ephemeral materials such as ash, hair, butterflies and bijoux, Koh’s assemblages extol passion as larger than language,^{[citation needed]} conveying engulfing sentiments in tactile mementos.^{[citation needed]} Koh’s sculptures appropriate diverse elements: drum sets, boudoir chandeliers, neon signs and Grecian busts are presented as symbols of power and delectation. Koh envelops their surfaces in monochromes of sinful^{[citation needed]} black, virginal^{[citation needed]} white and the cold lustre of diamond dust. His forms encourage sensations of lust, emptiness and sorrow.^{[citation needed]}

Playing on coded sub-cultural signs, Koh insinuates a wry wit^{[citation needed]} within his connoisseur’s aesthetic. Decadent, pornographic, sensuous and clever, Koh’s work explores the nature of queerness with a compelling sensitivity and openness.^{[citation needed]}

He spends some of his time in New York City and Europe.

Terence Koh is represented by Javier Peres of Peres Projects Gallery in Los Angeles, California and Berlin, Germany.