Eteri Chkadua at Scope NYC

Eteri and her Art Dealer Viola Romoli (The Pool NYC). 

http://thepoolnyc.squarespace.com/

I first met Georgian artist Eteri Chkadu at her show in Brooklyn's Rush Gallery and have followed her
career ever since. She represented Georgia at the 2007 Venice Biennale. Her beautiful bold paintings
celebrate a twenty first century feminism of self-revelation and revolution. Now living in Kingston,
Jamaica, Eteri came to NY for the Scope where her paintings graced the exhibition of The PoolNYC.

New Images

Here are computer "widgets" created by my husband Luigi Cazzaniga, from a photograph of his hometown Soncino, in Lombardia, Italy. He calls them "mollies" but I hate that name. I love the images.

Whitney Washout

On a stormy Tuesday evening, we headed uptown to the Whitney Biennale. Two years ago, Madi Weinrib and I braved a frigid long line to check out the much anticipated show. But this year, the freezing rain was especially daunting. What's with these museums, that invite privileged and supportive patrons to openings, only to leave them standing on block long lines for admittance? After a quick and delicious dinner at nearby EAT, we again cruised past the Whitney and its formidable queue. Sloppy planning and basic inconsideration.... I'll hit the Whitney on a weekday.

Alias Man Ray: The Art of Reinvention at the Jewish Museum

Alias Man Ray: The Art of Reinvention at the Jewish Museum
BY ILKA SCOBIE

November 15, 2009 - March 14, 2010
1109 5th Ave at 92nd St
New York City, 212 423 3200

Man Ray, La Fortune, 1938, oil on canvas.   Whitney Museum of American Art, New York: Purchase, with funds from the Simon Foundation, Inc.  © 2009 Man Ray Trust / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris.

The Jewish Museum’s May Ray exhibit is a blockbuster without the line, which is the result of the surprisingly little critical acclaim it has garnered.  Curated by Mason Klein, this beautifully designed show is the most comprehensive and analytical since the survey of this seminal modern artist at the Fondazione Mazzotta, Milan, in 1999. “Alias Man Ray’ includes photographs, assemblages, and paintings, and introduces little known treasures like the1911 fabric piece Tapestry made in Brooklyn before the artist left his family home; the original assemblage piece, Obstruction, a mobile of 63 wooden hangers; and the protoPop masterpiece of two silhouetted profiles kissing, Image a deux faces, (1959). The 110 cloth blocks of Tapestry, gathered from his family’s sweatshop cutting room floor, sets the standard of Man Ray’s meticulous craftsmanship, his blurring of exquisite fabrication with modernist sensibility.

As a Brooklyn Jew myself, I always knew Man Ray (Emmanuel Radnitzky) as an almost-native son. Born in Philadelphia in 1890, he soon moved to Brooklyn with his family of Russian immigrants. What I did not realize, however, was Man Ray’s fierce dedication to obscuring his origins, to the point of cropping a family photo to leave only an image of himself and his mother. Assimilation provides the premise for this illuminating exhibition, as detailed in Klein’s incisive catalogue essay: “In changing his name from the colloquial Manny to the unmoored Man, the artist lost and found himself in anonymity.”

Man Ray began his artistic career as a teenager, and these adolescent works – high school mechanical drawings- reveal a lifelong fascination with duality and concealment. An early proponent of Dada, (and a lifelong bohemian), Man Ray’s first marriage to Adon Lacroix, a Belgian poet, introduced him to French culture. In 1920 he created The Riddle also knownn asThe Enigma of Isidore Ducasse, a prescient work in view of his future allegiance with the Surrealists. An old sewing machine – aluding to the famous line from Lautreamont about the chance encounter of an umbrella and a sewing machine on a dissecting table but also, perhaps, a reference to his sweatshop childhood – was wrapped in army blanket and rope, photographed and then discarded. Man Ray recreated the piece in 1971.

When Man Ray emigrated to Paris in 1921, Marcel Duchamp (who had befriended him in New York) welcomed him at the train station. Even before his arrival, fellow Dadaists knew Man Ray’s work. Two 1918 photos, one of an eggbeater, (L’Homme) and another of clothespins and light reflectors (Woman or Integration of Shadows) were included in Salon Dada: Exposition Internationale before the artist’s actual arrival.

It was in Paris that Man Ray became a professional photographer. Vanity Fair, under the editorship of Frank Crowninshield, published two early Rayographs for theirNovember 1922 issue. Rayographs derived from a process of solarization discovered by chance in the artist’s darkroom; they entail direct exposure of objects on the photographic plate without intervention of a camera. Man Ray used modern machinery parts,or everyday objects combined with human faces or hands, in a technique Jean Cocteau described as “painting with light.” Another early collector, famed couturier Paul Poiret made Man Ray’s portraits a chic and commodifiable entity.

The subject of many of his most beautiful photographs, the young American Lee Miller sought Man Ray out as both lover and mentor. Miller also inspired Object of Desire, a drawing of a metronome capped with a photo of Millar’s languid eye. Instructions commenced with “Cut the eye from a photo of one who has been loved but is seen no more.”

Man Ray, Le Violon d'Ingres, 1924, vintage gelatin silver print.  Rosalind and Melvin Jacobs Collection.  © 2009 Man Ray Trust / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris and right, Rayograph, 1926, gelatin silver print.  Private Collection, New York.  © 2009 Man Ray Trust / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris

For twenty years, Man Ray worked as a Parisian artist, creating such surrealistic gems as Le Violon d’Ingres, (1924) and La Fortune (1938) with its foreboding primary colored clouds, a reaction to Europe’s increasingly dangerous political scene. His fashion and society images regularly appeared in Vogue and Harpers Bazaar.. He photographed the cool crowd –from Barbette, a drag queen championed by Cocteau to Ernest Hemingway, Meret Oppenheim, Kiki de Montparnasse (another of his lovers), Gertrude Stein, Picasso, and those tourists wealthy and connected enough to commission a portrait.

Joining European artists like Thomas Mann, Max Ernst, Luis Brunel and Salvador Dali, Man Ray fled the Nazis in 1940, and went to Hollywood where he married Juliet Browner in a dual ceremony with Max Ernst and Dorothea Tanning. Juliet was his companion for the rest of his life, and they returned to Paris in 1951. Late pieces like the magnificent screen Message to Marcia(1958/65) and the Smoking Device (1959/1970), with its surgical tubing predating today’s vaporizers, show that the artist continued a fruitful creative life.

Man Ray lived to become an inspiration for Allan Kaprow, Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, and Andy Warhol whose 1974 portrait paid homage to the artist, with its unusually complex composition and deliberately blurred edges.

The premise of the artist’s desire to obliterate his history is well illustrated and further documented by the wall text, and presents an intriguing addition to our understanding of his work. But even without its investigative information or theory,  “Alias Man Ray’ is a revelation. Ray’s added artistic details are always inherently modernistic – from the solarized photos with their defining outlines, his use of inscription, to his 1947 lithograph self portrait and it’s linear bisection.

Transgressive, experimental, fiercely individualistic, Man Ray is an iconic artist who bridged European and American experience, worked creatively and commercially, and evaded any categories not of his own creation. 

http://artcritical.com/IlkaScobie/ManRay.html

SPAGHETTI AL TONNO E POMODORO

It might be Restaurant Week, but we all know the economy of home cooking. Here’s a very easy and delicious meal with plenty of room for improvisation..

SPAGHETTI AL TONNO E POMODORO

This can go from high end (imported Italian tuna in a cute glass jar) to economy (Bumblebee chunk) It’s quick, comforting and perfect for a cold night. For an easy seasonal salad, chop up a grapefruit on top of  spinach, rugala, or romaine. Serve the spaghetti and savor the pleasure of dining at home.

1 7 oz jar or can of tuna

Olive oil

2-3 peeled and diced garlic

1 small chopped onion (optional)

1 28 oz. canned diced tomatoes

or if you’re not lazy 1 can plum tomatoes which you will chop up

½ teaspoon crushed red pepper

these are optional…..

2 Tb. Capers (I like salted, but remember to heavily rinse in hot water)

Some chopped black olives

1. Drain tuna of liquid, and break into pieces
2. Heat 2 tb. Olive oil, add chopped garlic, (and onion if you are so inclined)
3. Add tomatoes, red pepper and simmer for 10 minutes.
4. Now’s the time to add capers and olives, cook for 5 minutes.
5. Cook spaghetti until tender.
6. Stir in tuna and parsley.
7.  Add sauce, parsley and serve. 

Ulla inspires

I love this beautiful and elegant Alex Katz portrait of my dear friend (and blog guru) Ulla. It's just been finished and was shot in the artists studio. And here's Ulla again, painted by Alex for the Art Production Fund's taxi rooftop project. Yoko Ono and Shirin Neshat are the other participating artists. Check out the New York traffic for cruising artworks…..

check out her blog on www.modelsown.blogspot.com

My Terence Koh Story in Marie Claire Italy

This is in Italian, please refer to my former Terence Koh posting where I published this article in english.

Minuto, elegante, enigmatico: Terence Koh incarna alla perfezione l’artista del XXI secolo. Poeta, pornografo, filmmaker, mixa nuove tecnologie e media tradizionali come scultura e pittura. I suoi lavori sono estremi e molto, molto forti: mette in mostra escrementi laminati in oro ad Art Basel, disegna abiti per una delle boutique più trendy di New York, sul suo sito si può fare shopping con i sex toys che crea e gli piace fare la star (come all’ultima Biennale di Venezia).

Osannato dal mondo della moda, amico delle celeb, ha la fama di essere unfestaiolo incallito (lo chiamano “party boy”). Espone a Parigi, Londra e Roma, possiede un personalissimo spazio espositivo dal nome provocatorio, Ass (non pensate male, è l’acronimo di Asia Song Society), vende le sue opere nelle gallerie più glam e ha già al suo attivo delle personali al Whitney Museum diNew York, alla Tate Gallery di Londra e in diversi musei in Germania,Svizzera e Spagna.

Ci incontriamo in fondo a Chinatown, in un vecchio edificio di mattoni che gli serve sia da abitazione sia da luogo di lavoro. Quando arrivo, non c’è. Ma la sua presenza è anticipata da un mazzo di fiori appassiti disposti artisticamente, graffiti neri alle pareti e un campanello antiquato. Uno spazio tutto bianco, dalle scale fino all’ufficio, al soggiorno e all’atelier. Nel décor abbondano i temi che gli sono più cari: i conigli - o «coniglietti», come preferisce dire - teschi e sculture composte e ricomposte.

È nato a Pechino, cresciuto a Vancouver eppure, quando arriva, Terence Koh sembra la quintessenza del newyorkese doc. E forse lo è. «Vivo nel Lower East Side da quindici anni. E sono un abitante di Downtown fino al midollo. Qualsiasi cosa al di sopra di Houston Street è un altro pianeta. Un’altra patria d’elezione?Parigi, dove c’è la Galérie Thaddeus Ropac che da sempre ha creduto in me. Come la Peres Projects di Los Angeles.

Come vede il mondo? 

Diceva John Lennon: «C’è tanto dolore che le droghe sono un cancello d’ingresso in uno stato normalizzato». Ecco, io credo che nel mondo d’oggi ci siano tante persone infelici con o senza l’utilizzo di additivi chimici.

Lei si sente infelice?

No (sorride gesticolando elegantemente, ndr), non sono infelice perché cerco di rendere il mondo più bello.

E come pensa di riuscirci? Con la sua arte?

No, parlando molto con me stesso. Il segreto sta tutto nel cervello.

Questo edificio è suo?

Mi piacerebbe comprarlo, ma sono a corto di contanti. Vivo qui da due anni e mezzo ma il successo, quello vero, è arrivato non più di sei anni fa. Per raggiungere i miei obiettivi devo imparare a risparmiare.

Ha una relazione sentimentale?

Ma certo! Il mio compagno si chiama Garrick (i due si sono recentemente sposati indossando il velo bianco negli Hamptons, ndr).

Come si vive a New York? 
Si è completamente indipendenti. Questo da un lato ti dà un senso di libertà, dall’altro ti fa correre il rischio di vivere in una solitudine straziante. Vivo qui da molto, ma i primi due anni li ho passati da solo. Una vera sofferenza.

Lei è canadese... 
Sì, vengo da Vancouver, ma sono nato a Pechino e mi hanno abbandonato quando avevo soltanto tre anni.

Secondo lei le sue opere potrebbero essere esposte in Cina? 
Penso di sì. C’è stato dell’inutile sensazionalismo per molti miei lavori pornografici. Ma in realtà non c’è nulla di scandaloso.

So che partecipa anche a reading di poesia... La scorsa primavera avrei dovuto partecipare a un happening dal titolo Pax Americana. Ma, come fece Andy Warhol, ho mandato un mio sosia: un ragazzino con una parrucca che mi ha sostituito.

Quanto sono importanti per lei i versi?

Scrivo continuamente. Sul mio sito c’è una nuova poesia ogni giorno. È il modo migliore per rendere più belle le cose. Può essere una semplice frase o un racconto. Io, ad esempio, amo gli haiku di Basho e Tu Fu e I fiori del male di Baudelaire. Conservo questo libro sul comodino e ne leggo qualche pagina appena sveglio.

È mai stato in Italia? Sono stato a Venezia per la Biennale: al padiglione nordico ho presentato due sculture del David di Michelangelo, una di fronte all’altra. Era la prima volta che venivo in Laguna e l’ho amata moltissimo, soprattutto la notte quando è senza turisti. Ho poi esposto all’Ara Pacis di Roma, dove secoli fa venivano compiuti sacrifici agli dei. E infine, sono stato anche a Torino. Ma vuole sapere una cosa buffa? I miei contatti più intensi con l’Italia li ho quando vado a Long Island, a Bridge Hampton. Li vive la mia amica Jacquelyn Schnabel che ora sta con un italiano che cucina una meravigliosa pasta aglio e olio.

Lei era molto amico di Dash Snow, discendente dei famosi collezionisti de Menil, scomparso lo scorso agosto... 
La morte di Dash è stata una tragedia. Ero a Manchester, in Inghilterra. La notizia è arrivata nel bel mezzo di una performance di quattro ore che stavo tenendo insieme a Marina Abramovic. Mi sono messo a gridare anche se ero imbarazzatissimo. Marina poi mi ha consolato dicendomi che urlare è la cosa migliore da fare quando ci si sente molto vulnerabili.

Perché si veste sempre di bianco?
Perché mi piace l’impatto del candore negli occhi della gente che mi guarda.

Ha disegnato la t-shirt ricamata di perle che indossa: quali legami fra arte e moda?
Amo la moda così come amo cinema e poesia. Ma credo che il messaggio che trasmette l’abbigliamento sia più immediato dell’arte e quindi più semplice da comprendere.

Come ha realizzato questa t-shirt?
È stato complicato. Il mio assistente ha frantumato delle perle in un macinino da caffè e le ha incollate al tessuto. Il risultato? Una maglietta che costa 500 dollari perché ogni singolo esemplare è diverso dal’altro.

Lavora anche con altri media?
Sì, a Berlino ho realizzato un film di sei ore intitolato Dio. L’ho mostrato a Miami e a Basilea. C’erano diverse scene in cui saltavo intorno ai cimiteri, mangiavo insalata e facevo sesso con due persone diverse. Proprio Dash aveva curato parte della fotografia. Ma compongo anche musica, cercando di non farmi influenzare da quello che ascolto.

Considera le sue opere omoerotiche?
Ognuno ha diritto ad avere la sua opinione. Più che omoerotico io vorrei essere universale.

Diventerà mai cittadino americano?
Sono molto indeciso. Per il momento mi tengo il passaporto canadese.

È felice per l’operato di Obama?
Sì. «Ah, se i re potessero essere filosofi...». Non ricordo più chi l’ha detto, ma Barack Obama è per me proprio come un filosofo.

Ha speranze per un futuro migliore?

Sì. E sa cosa le dico? Penso che dovremmo averne tutti.

http://www.marieclaire.it/magazine/fan-club/terence-koh

Denyse Thomasos: The Divide at Lennon, Weinberg By Ilka Scobie

Denyse Thomasos: The Divide at Lennon, Weinberg

By Ilka Scobie

December 3, 2009 - January 9, 2010
514 West 25th Street, between 10th and 11th avenues
New York City, 212 941 0012

Denyse Thomasos Lollipop Nation 2009.  Acrylic on canvas, 40 x 54 inches. Courtesy Lennon, Weinberg, Inc.

The ten paintings in “The Divide” are the powerful culmination of many years research and travel. Denyse Thomasos's long interest in the architecture of confinement has taken her to Europe. Africa, Asia, and most recently, to the new super jails Maryland. Merging indigenous structures such asMali mud huts and Indian dwellings with hi tech prison catwalks and a punchy palette, Thomasos has made an opulent creative breakthrough in this new body of work. Known previously for her monochromatic elegance, the unexpected jolts of cotton candy colors replicate industrial stairwells and the quirky hues of current fashions.

While Thomasos shows widely in her native Canada (especially her monumental wall pieces) this is her first New York solo show in several years. In October, Lennon Weinberg included her more abstract 2001 painting, Inside Wyoming, in a superb group show, “Before Again”, alongside works by Joan Mitchell, Harriet Korman, Melissa Meyer, and Jill Moser.  These new works of complexity and intensity are beautiful in their pattern making and pattern breaking, allegorical architectures that present new possibilities for painting.

The artist portrays futuristic environments that reference slavery and imprisonment. There is also an element of fifties space age nostalgia in her diagonally floating crosshatched apparitions. Trinidadian by birth, raised in Canada, now a New Yorker, the artist has a sophisticated visual language in which intense dimensionality allows for a free flow of ideas and information. Her masterful hand reveals poetry in the political.

If early modernist abstraction was inspired by nature, Thomasos's vigorously contemporary abstraction is constructed upon imaginary metropolitan grids in which subterranean cages rise to skyscraper scale and architectural renderings blur into infinite space. In the receding passageways of Inca Matrix (2009) weirdly pastel swatches emblazon the skeletal blueprints while otherworldly structures are pierced by hot pink unwavering brushstrokes.

Form and content are inseparable in Lollipop Nation (2009) where a cage imprisons a vermillion-saturated block, perhaps a bloody heart. Of this particular piece, the artist has said: “We can live in luxury and the invisibility of imprisoning mostly black kids.” The methodically built textural surfaces of her imaginary infrastructures, as if corresponding to cultural codifications, intimate a nuanced view of oppression. 

Andres Serrano

Andres Serrano interview by ilka Scobie photos Luigi Cazzaniga

Self proclaimed “outsider” artist Andres Serrano has been a glamorous presence in the New York art world for over twenty years. In the midst of a bustling downtown block, he lives in a self-designed ecclesial space. Immense ceilings and Jerusalem stone walls create a dramatic serenity. The sole window looks out on a burst of urban greenery, as light floods the burnished wooden walls and Church furniture. His only bow to modernity is the 60 inch plasma TV downstairs. One of his large portraits of the Imperial Klan wizard, garbed in green, instead of the usual white hooded costume hangs on a wall. It’s the only 21^st century artwork, except for a Jeff Koons piece and a Jenny Holzer work that remain stashed in a 17^th century cupboard.

Perhaps best known for the controversy surrounding his infamous 1986 “Piss Christ”, Serrano became instantly famous as an unwilling soldier in the conservative cultural war of the late eighties. Senators denounced him, death threats were made, and for six months, he remembers not allowing his photo to be taken. Serrano recalls a Venetian monsignor telling La Stampa newspaper, he was “a transgressive artist, not a blasphemous one.”

The half Honduran, half Afro Cuban New Yorker has exhibited widely and internationally, creating a magnificent body of work that portrays sexuality, death, guns, homeless people, Klu Klux Klanners, and in his last critically acclaimed show, feces.

IS :  Are most of these treasures from Europe?

AS: Yeah , they are either French , English, Italian , German, Spanish.

IS: And how long did it take you to amass this?

AS: I have been collecting for about fifteen years... most of the stuff here is probably about the last ten years.

IS:  Do you travel frequently?

AS: I do, sometimes. And a few of my things I have gotten on my travels, but most things I bought either at auction.. at Sotheby's or Christie's or a couple of dealers. My focus is 17th century and earlier. A lot of my things are 17th, 16th and 15th. I even have a 13th century Madonna in my bedroom. She is very Romanesque.

IS: You have been called a conceptualist with a camera rather than a photographer. How do you see yourself?

AS: I like that, as an artist with a camera, rather than a photographer because I studied sculpture and painting at the Brooklyn Museum art school. I was there in 67/ 68. I studied with Calvin Douglas, he was a black teacher. It was a great place.

IS:  Did you live in Brooklyn?

A: I was born in Manhattan but the family moved to Williamsburg when I was about 6 or 7, before it was gentrified. I think I was one of the first artists when I arrived in 1957 in Williamsburg. I grew up in Brooklyn until after art school when I was about 19 then I moved into Manhattan. I lived at 95 Havemeyer Street in a building that was owned by my grandmother. My mother and I rented from her and we lived on the 2nd floor. I once saw a receipt from that time and rent was $43 a month. Long gone.

I: Are you religious?

A: I am not a practicing Catholic, I am a Christian... I go to churches first of all in Europe and I go to churches first of all for aesthetic reasons rather than spiritual ones. They are the temples of beauty. I find churches in the US are not old enough for my tastes. So I prefer the churches of Europe.

I ask Andres about his Klan series.

A: There is a curiosity, I was scared, but mostly I was scared of coming back empty handed. First of all I asked the Klan that I met to pose for me, the ex imperial wizard at first refused to pose for me and only after his lawyer asked him several times, he finally relented and said 'yes'. Ironically his lawyer was Jewish. The clan had a Jewish lawyer defending him in the Supreme Court and it was a case where they were trying to wear their masks in public and they lost their case.

IS: How were they as people?

AS: They would talk about niggers, jews and queers, but after they realized I wasn't there to confront them, to judge or debate them, they would settle down and act normal. They realized I was Latino I am sure, they knew I was not white. They were very normal looking, in fact, James .... the ex-imperial wizard was an old man and he looked very normal.  But I found, no matter how nice they were to me, as soon as they put on their robes and masks, they assumed a different aura and it was very unsettling. I knew the men behind the masks, and yet once they had their masks on, they had another persona.

IS: The one thing I always really admired is that in going to one of your shows you really have a very in-depth and profound experience. What is the next thing you are working on?

A: It’s a new project. Unbeknownst, music is my first love. I always wanted to be a singer, a musician. I didn’t have the courage. So I have been in the recording studio. What I’m working on is rock, soul, rhythm and blues, maybe a little punky. The record’s called “Vengeance is Mine.” I chose to do some songs I have always loved.While we were in the studio, I was asked, do you have any lyrics? and I said no.. but my girlfriend Irina Movmviga she said, wait a minute, I have to go home. I'll be back. And she came back 2 hours later with lyrics and I didn't even know she wrote songs. On the spot we created a melody and we recorded the song. The next day she wrote 2 other songs which were recorded too.. so there were three originals there, written by Irina on the spot.

I really want to find a record label rather than market it myself. I developed a character, a persona, for this album as a recording artist. I won’t be recording as Andres Serrano but as Brutus Faust.

IS: What will the costume be?

AS: It is very simple.... you’ll have to see. Hopefully, if I get a label interested, I'll let you know and I'll send you a copy. I don't really want to perform at this point, I just want to record. If at some point in the future, I have to perform I'll get ready for that, but right now I just want to record the music and get ready for that. As a kid that music stuff was a dream but I never really tried it. I didn't sing as a child and I was afraid to, but I feel I know music even better than art. It is funny, art doesn't move me emotionally, even as a visual artist, I am not moved by my work, even though I enjoy doing it.

Music moves me and film moves me. More than anything, music moves me. It gives you emotion, a lot of emotion. I feel the art world is very small compared to the people that buy music, who listen to music, to people who go see a movie, to sports, even people who go to wrestling matches. Art has a relatively small space in most people lives.

IS: Is there any artistic group you feel a part of? Mapplethorpe?

AS: All of my life I had a sense of passing through. I always had the sense that I am here now, for the time, but I am not really one of you. And that goes way back to the days of art school, when I became a drug addict, and for about eight years I did a lot of heavy drugs in the lower east side. And even then I felt, yes, I am a part of this but I am not really one of you.

And that feeling has even persisted in my years as an artist. So I always got the sense of passing through.  And that allows me to do as many things as I have done in my life, meaning that I am not attached to any one thing.

IS: What's the next thing besides the music that you are interested in, like after doing the whole Shit show?

AS: For me shit was sort of like an end game, meaning that if I don't do anything from here, I am okay with that. I don't produce a show unless there is a reason for it, unless I have been asked by a gallery to do a show, unless there is a venue.

Right now, there are no plans for me to do anything. The ideas are sort of on the back burner. I felt that "shit" was sort of a conclusion to a phase of my life and if I wouldn't do any more as an artist, I wouldn't miss it.

 I feel that Marcel Duchamp had a similar attitude when he stopped doing any art work in the last 25 years of his life and just played chess. He knew that he had nothing more to say and rather than repeating himself ad nauseum he decided to leave it alone.

IS: I hope you don't. And all your admirers certainly hope you don't.

AS: If I am invited to do something, maybe I will.

IS: How long did it take to shoot the shit show?

AS: The shit show took me 2 months and most of the shit work was taken in Ecuador in about a two week period.

One of them was my shit, one of them was Luther, my dog's shit, but all the other shits were animal shits. Actually, there were two other human shits, 'Freudian Shit'; which came from my therapist and "Holy Shit" which came from a priest.

IS: You did it in a studio in Ecuador? The light was so amazing.

AS: Most of it was done in a zoo in Ecuador, we just found a room and made it into a studio.

LC: Did you ever do work with sperm?

AS: I did ejaculations in 1989.

IS: Were you influenced by Piero Manzoni who put his shit in a can?

AS: Not at all, because Manzoni put shit in a can. No one has ever taken pictures close up of shit and called it "shit". I feel it is two birds of a different color.

I: Where do you usually work?

AS: I work here. The assistant puts up the equipment, I shoot the picture and then we put it away. I use a Mamiya rb 67. I don't use digital. I like film, I use ciba chrome, I print from scans, the originals are transparencies. 6x7 film. I use a tripod. I studied painting and sculpture, not photography. After two years of painting I felt I couldn't paint really and so after I left art school I lived with a woman called Milly Erwick and she owned a Konica camera. So I started using her camera, but always thinking of myself as an artist using a camera, rather than a photographer.

I would like to write my memoirs one day, but again, I need a reason to write for example if a publisher came to me, I would write. I don't like to waste my time and I like to do my projects when I know where they are going. I work better with a deadline as well.

I was 40 when success really started to happen. I am 59. I was already an older artist, I was surprised since I never thought I would make money from my work. I always wanted to show it and I always thought success would come for me after my death. So I was happily surprised that I'd come to a point where I could make a living off my work.

I: Do you envision staying in New York?

A: I am a hardcore New Yorker, I have been here all of my life. I have lived for four months in Budapest, three months in Rome but I never gave up my apartment in New York. It's home. I remember a few days after Sept. 11 a lot of people were leaving the city and I asked a friend of mine from the Bronx, “Where are you gonna go?” and he said: “Where am I gonna go, I will stay here and defend the city”. And that was the attitude: we are going to stay here to the end.

I: And how do you think your art will be remembered?

A: My artistic legacy is a lot of passion. My legacy as an artist is that I made an impression and that’s the best thing anyone could do.

Koh Baby

Koh Baby: Terence Koh by Ilka Scobie photos by Luigi Cazzaniga

Elfin, elegant and enigmatic, Terence Koh represents an epitome of the twenty first century artist. Poet, pornographer, filmmaker, he also works in traditional mediums like sculpture and painting. His work is madly popular, selling gold plated feces at the Basel Art Fair, exhibiting in the Venice Biennale, designing clothes for one of NYC’s hippest boutiques, and peddling objects both erotic and witty on his personal website. He’s a fashion darling, friend of the famous, with a reputation as both party boy and provacatuer. Exhibited in Paris, London, and soon, Rome, Terence is a new breed of artist who maintains his own gallery, sells work through venerable New York galleries, as well as upstart ones, and has exhibited in New York’s Whitney Museum, London’s Tate Gallery, and museums in Germany, Switzerland and Spain.

We met at the end of Chinatown, in an old brick building that serves as both home and studio. An artfully arranged bunch of dying flowers, black scribbles of graffiti and an old fashioned bell announced his presence.

Terrence’s domicile is all white, from the narrow painted stairs, to his office, living space, and studio. Iconic themes abound both in décor and his work – rabbits, or bunnies, as he prefers, skulls, reworked sculptures, and everywhere, an expanse of white.

Born in Beijing, raised in British Vancouver, Canada, Terence seems the quintessential New Yorker.

T. I have lived on the lower east side for twelve to fifteen years. I am a downtown New Yorker to the core. Anything above Houston Street is a different planet. My primary gallery in Galerie Thaddeus Ropac in Paris, France, where I will be showing a solo show on October 6^th. I also show at Peres Projects in Los Angeles. Other artists that show at Ropac are Alex Katz, Francesco Clemente. The name of my upcoming show is “Magic Bunny Trees.” John Lennon said it well; “There is so much pain in the world that drugs are just a gateway to a normalized state.” I think that there are so many unhappy people in the world.

You are not unhappy?

Terence smiles beautifully, and gestures with his elegant and expressive hands, as he replies.

“No, I am not unhappy because I try to make the world more beautiful.”

But how are you going to make the world better?

“I just have to do it by myself. I have to talk to myself more, it’s all in the brain.”

I ask him about his mercurial success.

“I’ve lived here in this space for two and a half years, and I would love to buy the building but I’ve been cash strapped. I’ve really only had success for the past six years and now I have to learn how to save.”

“My partner Garrick will come to visit me in Paris for the Ropac show. You know when you have been in a relationship long as Garrick and I have been, alone time is really important. I find that I think better when I am alone.”

You’re lucky to have a partner in NY….

“Yes, because in New York you are on the verge of complete independence, which can be really freeing, at the same time excruciatingly lonely. I have been in Ny for ten years but the first two years I spent alone and it was painful. I came from Toronto but was born in Beijing and left when I was three. Last time I was in China was a year ago.”

Would they show your work in China?

“I would think so, because a lot of my pornographic work ahs been sensationalized. A lot of my work is not controversial. I had an idea for a show but it was very apolitical.”

Last spring Terence was supposed to participate in an outdoor poetry reading, called “Pax Americana.” My friend Stefan Bondell curated the event, in which I also read. Like Andy Warhol did many years ago, Terence sent a proxy, a teenage kid with a wig, who performed Terence’s piece. I ask him about poetry.

“I write poetry everyday. On my website asian punk boy there is a new poem everyday. A poem is again a way to make things more beautiful or clearer. Poetry can be a sentence or a narration. I have been reading haikus by Basho and Tu Fu and I am reading Flowers of Evil by Baudelaire. I have it by my bed so I read it the first thing when I get up and I am blind.”

You have also shown with Vito Schnabel.

“He is one of my best friends. He is on a plane right now to Miami. IN the near future, we ‘re working on something for a public space. Then I am doing something for “New York Minute” in Rome. It will be a great show of NYC artists curated by Cathy Grayson from Deitch. There will be at least 60 artists, including the late Dash Snow.”

In August, Dash Snow, grandson of the illustrious art family the de Menils, died of a heroin overdose. He left behind a child, Secret, and companion, Jade. Much loved in the downtown scene, Deitch Gallery mounted a tribute show of work by Dash’s many artist friends. Terence was a great friend of Dash’s and we speak about his sudden death. “It’s a tragedy, Dash was so beautiful.”

“Art has no limits. If I decide it’s for art itself, then I become brave. It’s almost like a switch is put on. Because when I was doing my performance in Manchester, England with Marina Abramovic, I exposed myself. When my friend Dash died, I was still performing a four hour piece – you expose yourself to an audience. I was crying and everything, and I was so embarrassed. And Marina said, “It’s the best thing when you’re vulnerable . People understand that.”

I admire Terence’s self-designed pearl encrusted T shirt and ask him about the intersection between art and fashion.

“I love fashion like I love film and poetry, because fashion is outward, it is easier defined. Fashion is easily understood. I am working with Opening Ceremony. 
I did their windows.”

And the particuliars of his T-shirt?

“My assistant crushed pearls in a coffee grinder and used fabric glue. It is $500 because everyone is different.”

I congratulate Terence and Garrick on their recent marriage. They pose wrapped in white bridal netting, and tell me the ceremony took place in the Hamptons.

I question Terence about two of his trademarks, the bunny and the pervasive wearing and use of the color white.

Why is the bunny your thing?

“I am genetically disposed.”

Do you always wear white?

“Yes, most of the time because I like the way life shows on the clothes. Just like on this T shirt, you can see all the dirt, form life itself. My parents are very proud and happy of my career, and they come to see my exhibitions. They love coming to my openings. I always dress them up for my openings, and if it is a white opening, I dress them all in white. I just like the color itself. In utero, everything is white.”

Do you work in photography?

“I do, and I have made a film of six hours called ‘God’. 
I showed it in Miami Basel and it was different scenes of me jumping round cemeteries, eating salad, having sex with two different people. Dash did some photographing. I made it in Berlin and it is for imagery itself.”

Having listened to Terence’s haunting music on the computer, I ask him about it.

“I do make music and it is in my own language.”

What’s your relationship with the neighborhood? What do your neighbors think?

“I love living with the Chinese in Chinatown. Not because I love the food, especially here in New York. I like Chinese food cooked by my mom or in San Francisco. My favorite food is spaghetti and spaghetti sauce, it is comfort food.”

Do you consider your work homoerotic?

“You have the rights to your opinion. I would like to be universal as opposed to homoerotic. It is best to be the universe.”

Are you going to become an American citizen”

“Undecided. I have a Canadian passport.”

Were you happy about Obama.

“Yes, “If kings could be philosophers.” I am not sure who said that.

Obama is secretly a philosopher.”

Are you hopeful?

“Yes, we all should be.”