Purple Diary
[May 6 2009]
Terence Koh new show Boy By The Sea at Peres Projects in Berlin
The following is an email conversation with Terence Koh about his 2008 sculpture, “Boy by the Sea,” which depicts a perfect mirror image of Terence Koh’s body at 2/3 size, with bunny ears, and covered with 65,000 faux pearls. In making the work, Koh had his body scanned three-dimensionally, and, using the resulting data, was able to reproduce an exact replica of his body in the size he would have been as a boy.
- A few years ago, you made a drawing of a boy by the sea. Is it the same boy as your drawing (of you?) by the sea from many years ago, only to finally gain human/Kohbunny form?
Terence Koh: yes time is all the same illusion to me. so yes same boy, same time. but not kohbunny, this work for yokohama and the drawing is terence koh.
- Is the sculpture Kohbunny? (as a boy?)
TK: again nothing to do with kohbunny. that is a website. just terence koh. i like rabbits. and the ears make everything more dramatic. the piece is about drama. actions. movement.
- Are there any real pearls among the faux pearls?
TK: i of course would love to do it all out of real pearls. but i would rather donate the money if i were to use real pearls to saving sea turtles. but research proved that all the pearls in this piece even if not “real” pearls from an oyster were created naturally from a blend of fishscales. and i love the idea that the fishscales have become pearls and in the end they look like scales on my body.
- What was it like having your body 3-D scanned? That means that there is now some digital form of your body, sort of like a DNA sequencing. Have you thought of selling this data? What is it like having a scan of your body that is in digital form?
TK: i loved it. i love that i am preserved in 3D now in a form, and i want to distribute this information into the internet. so again its back to this idea of constant action and movement in the answer to my first answer.
- Is the sea special for you in some way? Is Yokohama?
TK: yes i love the sea more than most people. cause i am fearful of the sea, the darkness, the complete blackness. the bottom of the sea is the most perfect form of blackness and right down there is its equal, a pearl of complete whiteness. that pearl is hidden inside the mouth of this sculpture. and it talks for eternity to the empty plinth that is part of this piece.
Peres Projects, Berlin, until June 13
