Javier Peres, director of Peres Projects, presents his booth and the work of artist Terence Koh at Art 37 Basel. Terence Koh's sculptural installations are marked by their stark use of a singular color. Peres Projects is located in the Chinatown district of Los Angeles. In September 2005, the gallery opened its second space in Berlin. Peres Projects, Art Statements sector, Art 37 Basel, June 15, 2006.
Category
🦄
CreativityTranscript
00:00 booth of Paros Projects and we're talking with Javier Perez and he will tell us something
00:07 about his booth here at the Art Basel.
00:11 So we're presenting this year Terrence Coe in a solo presentation.
00:15 The entire body of work, which consists of four works, are untitled.
00:20 In this body of work Terrence is continuing his exploration of his own mythology and in
00:25 this case, having already died in his last exhibition in Berlin at the gallery, he is
00:32 now becoming an immortal.
00:34 The installation is set up so that one walks through the blinding lights which are flanked
00:39 by the gold paintings which act as mirrors.
00:43 The 222 lights reflected in the mirrors become 888 lights.
00:49 Triple infinity, an idea of triple happiness, it's a fictitious notion using numerology.
00:55 And as you enter the glass cubes you see that there is in the center a stack consisting
01:02 of 88 glass cases.
01:04 The cases are all filled with shit made out of bronze gilded in gold, flanked on the top
01:09 by two golden heads also cast in bronze and gilded in gold.
01:13 Portraits of Terrence speaking to himself in the position of the Roman kiss, cheek to
01:19 cheek, there's points of rapture as that God is becoming an immortal, he is becoming an
01:26 immortal.
01:27 So there's broken glass in some of the cases, there's a third head, an indication that the
01:31 God sees everything, his powers are sort of infinite.
01:36 And in the last bit you see in the corners these two visions of this supernatural creature.
01:43 He's both a beast and a man and a combination of both.
01:46 And the one on the right which is his bronze cast of himself, his head is gilded with golden
01:54 bees, they're all bees gilded in gold.
01:57 His mouth is opening and morphing into something else as he looks eternally into the mirror
02:04 gazing at his own sort of grotesqueness and beauty.
02:06 And on the other side you have a taxidermy of an orangutan, also gilded in gold, painted
02:12 with gold, with the nose and the head piece morphing into something else.
02:17 So that's basically what this installation is about on a very sort of basic superficial
02:22 level.
02:23 That's the narrative of the story.
02:26 It's all the narrative of the story by the way that I've made for it because he's given
02:30 us no indication of what any of the works are about.
02:33 Great.
02:34 Terrence, do you have a room in Berlin and in Los Angeles?
02:41 Yeah, I opened the gallery in Los Angeles on May 10, 2003 with the first solo exhibition
02:48 of then Asian Punk Boy who is Terrence Coe.
02:52 And then on September 30th of last year, 2005, I opened the gallery in Berlin with an exhibition
03:00 entitled "Mein Tod, Mein Tod, Mein Death, Mein Death" in German and that was Terrence's
03:05 death.
03:06 How about you?
03:09 You happy with your venue in Berlin?
03:11 Yeah, yeah.
03:12 I live in Berlin.
03:13 I have a house in Berlin.
03:14 I have a house in Los Angeles.
03:15 I'm even actually going to start taking German lessons this summer finally.
03:20 Having resisted learning German for a while.
03:23 I'm too old to learn such a hard language, you know.
03:26 Not like 18 years old or something.
03:29 So traveling a lot?
03:30 Yeah, I've always traveled a lot.
03:32 So this is nothing new.
03:33 No, I used to be a lawyer before and I managed a law firm in Belgium but my main office was
03:40 in California.
03:41 So I used to work between Belgium and California and my main, main client was actually in Frankfurt.
03:46 So you know the world.
03:49 I've always traveled, yes.
03:51 I know Western Europe and America better than other places, yeah.
03:56 I've never been to Asia.
03:58 Okay, thank you very much.
04:00 Sure, my pleasure.
04:02 Thank you.
04:04 Thank you.
04:06 Thank you.
04:08 Thank you.
04:10 Thank you.
04:12 Thank you.
04:14 Thank you.
04:16 Thank you.
04:18 Thank you.
04:20 [BLANK_AUDIO]
04:30 [BLANK_AUDIO]
04:40 [BLANK_AUDIO]