Terence Koh

For his first solo museum show in the United States, Terence Koh is creating a new installation for the Whitney's Lobby Gallery. In Koh's immersive, typically monochromatic environments--in which minimalist and baroque aspects of his sensibility vie for dominance--a seemingly unknown ritual is about to take place, where a sense of loss simultaneously suggests regeneration. From drifting powder silencing rooms, and constellations of cryptically linked objects that move from literally disjunctive realms (upstairs/downstairs, inside/outside, dark/light) as well as more conceptual ones, to pristine, perfectly crafted containers that become coffins for shattered glass and mirror, the glitter of black beads, burnt objects, residing within--Koh's gestures evoke isolation and secrecy, but also protection and ecstasy.