Terence Koh Stages a Bold Return to the Art World—and a Chapel

TerenceKohStagesaBoldReturntotheArtWorld—andaChapel
forBees
ARTSYEDITORIAL
BYKATHERRIMAN
MAY26TH,201611:00AM
The march to “terence koh: bee chapel” at Andrew Edlin Gallery. Photo by Charles Roussel,
courtesy of the artist and Andrew Edlin Gallery.
Two years ago, Terence Koh moved upstate to get away from the hustle of the
New York art world. The artist took time to reset in the wilderness, and just this
weekend, he made a roaring return. “terence koh: bee chapel,” the artist’s new
show at Andrew Edlin Gallery, kicked off with a festive start on Saturday,
beginning with a procession from 1st Avenue and 1st Street down to the gallery
on Bowery and Rivington. Koh’s dramatic re-entry into the art world echoed the
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playful stunt of artist Maurizio Cattelan, who came out of his own art-world
retirement just a month before, with plans to install a golden toilet at the
Guggenheim. While not as flashy as Cattelan’s stunt, Koh’s parade sent ripples
along the Lower East Side with its mysterious call to action. The processors
carried signs reading “Now.”
The sight appeared to be part protest, part funeral. Impromptu pallbearers carried
a self-portrait of the artist as deflated beekeeper-meets-astronaut. Strange but
captivating, the mummy-like object was eventually entombed within Edlin’s
second gallery space by members of the procession, which included Printed
Matter’s Phil and Shelley Fox Aarons. “We’ve been in many processions with
Terence,” Shelley Fox Aarons tells me over the phone. “Back in the day, he used
to lead them; this time he let the effigy lead the way.”
The Fox Aarons have always been Koh’s champions. They began collecting his
zines in the early 2000s back when he was publishing under the pseudonym
Asian Punk Boy, and now they are the proud owners of My Coffin (2002), Koh’s
first sculpture that evolved out of a collaboration with the publishers. A window
into Koh’s past and present, Aarons saw “bee chapel” in its first iteration: a
whimsical sculpture on Koh’s upstate property filled with live stingers. “In the bee
chapel in the country, you are much closer to the bees. Terence leaned in and
said, ‘Shelley put your face up against the screen, no, closer,’” she recalls. “And,
it’s actually a different experience like that. Your vision starts to blur and you go
into this altered state with the smell of the honey and the wax. It’s almost like you
are melting into yourself—which does not happen in the bee chapel at Andrew
Edlin, but I think it gives a different sensation... It feels like you are
communicating with the universe.”
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Installation view of “terence koh: bee chapel” at Andrew Edlin Gallery. Photo by Olya Vysotskaya,
courtesy of the artist and Andrew Edlin Gallery.
There is something distinctively interstellar about Koh’s exhibition. The chapel’s
elliptical shape resembles a rudimentary spaceship, especially upon seeing the
plastic tube that filters bees into the gallery. And the insects aren’t the only thing
living things in the exhibition. A felled apple tree greets visitors in the musky first
room, where the beekeeper rests on a bed of topsoil. These primal vignettes link
up to create a sense of journey through the darkened space. The sights and
smells encourage one to embrace the senses rather than intellect. Somber but
weirdly sweet, the intoxicating mix leaves one to wonder what Koh is ultimately
getting at. “Terence always works in layers; [his works] are composed of many
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references that build on one another,” Fox Aarons says, offering some guidance.
“It’s never about just death without being about the life cycle. It’s really pretty
existential. I would say most of his work concerns the place where annihilation
becomes transcendence.”
His hive certainly walks that line. For someone with a severe allergy, the bee
chapel poses a lethal threat, but it’s the pending extinction of these pollinators
that seems to be at the heart of this exhibition. “Terence brought people to the
bee chapel [upstate], but he felt he needed to share this project with a larger
audience because of its implications,” Fox Aarons explains. An artistic response
to Colony Collapse Disorder, a disease killing off the world’s bee population, the
show places critical emphasis on the relationship between nature and man.
Giving a glimpse into Koh’s adventures into the wilderness, the exhibition’s
triumph is its ability to take an abstract concept and make it visceral.
—Kat Herriman
“terence koh: bee chapel” is on view at Andrew Edlin Gallery, New York, May
21–July 1, 2016.
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