Events > Publishing

01 Jan. 2008

TERENCE KOH: A BEAVER TAIL

Artist
Terence Koh

Art Metropole is pleased to announce the release of A BEAVER TAIL, a new edition by New York-based artist Terence Koh. Cast in bronze and finished with a soft white patina, A BEAVER TAIL is a life-sized reproduction of the iconic cold-season Canadian pastry of the same name. Produced in an edition of 10, each copy of A BEAVER TAIL is housed in a custom box with debossed text on the lid, and is accompanied by a bookwork and insert card. The edition retails at $12,500. Art Metropole officially releases A BEAVER TAIL at Art 39 Basel, June 4-8 in Basel (Switzerland).

Conceptualizing this project specifically for Art Metropole, Terence Koh chose the beavertail for its nationalistic identity. The artist performed a secret “veneration” of the bronze, at Art Metropole, on the evening of Saturday May 3. The performance/ritual, enacted without an audience, was photo-documented. Selected images of the performance are featured in the bookwork which accompanies the edition – revealing the details of the secret ritual. A special edition (200 copies), of the bookwork receives a simultaneous release.

The remnants of Koh’s performance constitute an installation, also entitled A BEAVER TAIL. The installation remains on view at Art Metropole through Saturday May 31. The public are invited to witness the clues to the veneration.


Terence Koh (born 1977 in Beijing, China) is a Canadian artist. Koh creates handmade books and zines, prints, photographs, sculptures, performances, and installations. Much of his diverse work involves queer, punk, and pornographic sensibilities. Koh has also worked under the alias “asianpunkboy”, though it appears that name has been retired as of 2009. In 2008, he was listed in Out magazine’s “Out 100 People of the Year”.

Koh was raised in Mississauga, Ontario, and lives in New York City. He is a Chinese-Canadian artist who received his Bachelor degree from the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design, Vancouver.

Terence Koh was shortlisted for the Sobey Art Award in 2008. He has exhibited widely in the United States and abroad. Koh’s work has been the subject of several major solo exhibitions including Love for Eternity, a mid-career retrospective at MUSAC (Leon, Spain); Captain Buddha, Schirn Kunsthalle (Frankfurt, Germany); Dirty Blind God, de Pury & Luxembourg, (Zurich, Switzerland); Terence Koh Whitney Museum of American Art, (New York).

In the tradition of Piero Manzoni, Koh has gold-plated and sold his own feces for a total of $500,000.00 to collectors. He is represented by Javier Peres of in Los Angeles and Berlin, and Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac in Salzburg and Paris.

In 2008 he created the Terence Koh Show on YouTube, in which visitors to his home are either interviewed by Koh, or interview Koh themselves. Each show is usually not more than a few minutes in length. Some episodes are more abstract, such as when he plays the video forward but edits the sound to play backwards. Notable guests have included Marina Abramović, Hans Ulrich Obrist, and most recently, Lady Gaga. In the clip with Lady Gaga titled 88 pearls, Koh counts a bowl of pearls with Lady Gaga, who is wearing a costume inspired by Koh’s sculpture from his project Boy By The Sea. Koh’s affiliation with the pop star began at the 2010 Grammys, where Lady Gaga performed on a piano designed by Koh specifically for the occasion.

Koh’s work has been associated with New Gothic Art.

In nothingtoodoo, his first solo show at the Mary Boone Gallery, Koh, “dressed in white pajamalike clothes, slowly circl[es] a beautiful cone-shaped pile of rocky solar salt — 8 feet high and 24 feet across — on his knees.” So Roberta Smith described the work in an appreciative March, 2011, review. “This is performance art reduced to a bare and relentless rite in a space that has been stripped down to a kind of temple. (Its regal proportions help.) … Maybe the work is an extended apology for past bad-boy behavior.

(from wikipedia)