'The Last Supper'
Midnight, Zurich, the witching hour. Shipped in taxis to a warehouse space somewhere midtown, on turning the corner a gaggle of kids emerge from a blackened doorway clutching their eyes, whilst spitting champagne. Guess we have arrived at the Terence Koh show... We climb a few steps to be greeted by a scene like the opening of Blade where all the strangers in the underground rave turn into vampires at the flick of a bleeding switch, only this time, things get a lot more fucked up. Security guards in Matrix-style wraparound shades/suits combo usher you in through heavy, shiny, rubber curtains, where you automatically follow the black rubber brick road then !WHAM! You are bang in the centre of Hell, trapped and encased in the devils' rubber playroom, where his kinkiest, sluttiest reprobates play, bite and fuck each other at will - damn, it looks like you took a wrong turn.
Suddenly darkness has fallen across the land, soundtracked by deafening classical music and punctuated by a spastic blast of fit inducing lighting. Rat-atat-tat - the strobe shoots right through you like a machine gun, blinding your eyes, stopping your vision from working clearly... You can't see where you are stepping, all you can feel is the soles of your feet sticking to the floor like a fly glued to flypaper, your hands reaching for a friendly arm to guide you to safety, then all of a sudden a stalligmite pushes its way up through the ground with someone seemingly encased writhing within, their hand reaching out the top, grabbing for some light, but only reaching failure - there is no escape. They are not clutching at straws, but lit incense sticks which punctuate their cocoons, and create a fog around their shells. The foulest stench lies heavy and clammy in the air, something like the funk of forty thousand years, but then you realize, this isn't a back room of some seedy Berlin sex club, this rubber has been soaked in Hermes perfume, dipped into the well of luxury, adding a knowing, luxurious and styled intensity to the oral sensory assault.
You clamber around, desperate to get out of this beautiful nightmare, but a seemingly robed escape only leads you straight into the next porthole of doom, but this time, the tomb is compact and breathy, the strobe replaced by a timed flashlight, blinding you for a second before immersing you back into the type of darkness that smothers, and stops you seeing your hand in front of your face. Security has gone. Normality never to return. Your retinas retract, your senses are on delay, then after the third flash you start to adjust, and suddenly, like staring at a magic eye picture, a sculpture begins to emerge. Stood in the centre of the room, surrounded by ritualistic drawings carved banshee-like up the neverending rubber walls, sits a screaming two-faced totem of hate, a replica of Terence with two black cocks sticking antennae like out of his pained morphed heads. Then you realize that grizzly ghouls from every tomb are closing in to seal your doom, and it's time to make a run for it, you spot a glimmer of light and bolt for a potential exit.
And though you fight to stay alive, your body starts to shiver as you realize you have walked not out, but into the blackened 'Last Supper Of The Antichrist' - a life-sized evil replica of Jesus' last meal, but where Jesus' disciples sat and toasted their messiah, these skeletal disciples sit pirate like, looking like they just chugged a barrel of ale, malicious intent splayed across their never there faces, with human ears decorating their shiny black skulls. Jesus sits centre stage, like a ring wraith from Lord Of The Rings, enlarged and terrifying, he sits without a face, his cloak and hood seemingly made of dead black wasps, his whole being looking like a tar-soaked hive, whilst his hands lovingly rest upon the head of his newest and most prized possession, two life-sized sacrificial cows in the shape of Terence Koh.
Cast like perfect replicas of the living breathing work of art, Terence here is offering himself up to the dark God for the opportunity to live forever, purely so he can suck more cock and buy more fabulous fashion. This isn't about wandering passive through a gallery experience; this is art as commerce, cultural regurgitation, havoc, beauty, entrapment and a sordid tale of everything in excess, religion, alienation, belonging, self hate. Nearly GOD? Nearly DOG. Find yourself seduced by this torture garden, let this exciting punk of an artist feast on your flesh, because face it, no mere mortal can resist the evil of Terence's thriller.
Ben Reardon
Ben Reardon, editor of I-D magazine, helps Terence Koh dress for the performance on the opening night of the exhibition.
"GOD", 2007
Mixed media sculpture accompanied by Certificate of Authenticity
-Part 1 (Apostles):
Twelve found human skeletons, wax
Dimensions vary with installation
**what are they sitting on?
-Part 2 (Jesus):
Found mannekin, live ants, wax, plaster DIMS
-Part 3 (table):
Wood, wax, cotton cloth
75 cm (H) x 87 cm (W) x 558 cm (L)
-Part 4 (casts):
Casts of the artist's body - plaster, wax, live working ant farm within
each 18 cm (H) x 46 cm (W) x166 cm (L)
Hermes l'orange vert perfume
Terence Koh
Until 15 July
de Pury & Luxembourg
Limatstrasse 264
Zurich
T: +41 44 276 8020
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