A new exhibition at the Mary Boone Gallery features the work of Jeff Koons, Mike Kelley and Terence Koh, a rambunctious bunch by any standard. Curator Javier Peres assures us that the show will abide “No tricks, no gimmicks, no bullshit”—and he is right to assuage our doubts. Few other contemporary artists have excited such critical ire for their supposed extravagance and gimmickry. Koons, whose Neo-pop trinkets and unflagging self-promotion are well known, once provoked Mark Stevens to call him a “decadent artist [who] lacks the imaginative will to do more than trivialize and italicize his themes and the tradition in which he works.” In his defense, Koons has insisted that his work is not ironic; rather, he claims, its meaning is only what one perceives at first glance. In the context of the show, this turns out to be a worrisome declaration: as soon as you notice the block-lettered ‘KKK’ inscribed on the exhibition pamphlet, the only reasonable hope is that someone is pulling your leg.
As it happens, Koons’ current offerings are true to form: kitschy, stainless steel, quotidian—uncontroversial in form and appearance, yet persistently irksome. Fisherman Golfer is a folk-art martini shaker molded in the form of a doughy domestic servant. Koons, whose own financial success over the past three decades has ensured him no lack of personal assistants, seems happy to lend credence to an old apothegm: a drink always tastes better when it’s mixed by somebody else. As a compliment to this piece, he gives us Baccarat Crystal Set, a serving set cast in a silver-steel so shiny it would make Louis XIV blink.
There are also two pieces by Mike Kelley, both of them miniature cityscapes made of acrylic resin. When inspecting the obelisks, minarets, and mosques of City 6/No. 2 (Red), one has the impression of gazing down on an extraterrestrial metropolis raised out of cherry Jell-O, the architecture a mixture of Martian oddity and Arabian elegance. The resin traps light like murky water and gives the illusion of depth and transparency, which, when you consider it, is the beauty of any real city.
Peres is fond of Koons and Kelley, but he is enamored of Terence Koh. In 2003, when he sloughed his international-law career to launch Peres Projects gallery in Los Angeles, he offered the opening show to Koh, then an obscure New York punk-artist and struggling self-publisher. As Koh’s career took off (his The Whole Family was featured in the 2004 Whitney Biennial), Peres’s reputation as tastemaker seemed guaranteed. The show, then, is a sort of reunion, congratulating Koh and Peres on their common success.
Terence Koh’s ambition as an artist is palpable, especially in his determination to outdo the avant-gardists of yore. Koh’s Untitled (Urinal), 2008-2009, is a twenty-four- foot-long wall-mounted toilet made of lovely, high-polish white porcelain. Its dimensions alone make Duchamp’s commode look paltry, but the piece manages a sort of demotic beauty that is lacking in the Dadaist’s modest found art. Dossier estimates that Koh’s trough can accommodate fifteen gentleman shoulder to shoulder—but anyone willing to pay six-figures for a toilet is likely only to want to look at it.
Image: Mike Kelley, City 6 / No. 4, 2008. Courtesy Mary Boone Gallery.
