Anton Kern Gallery is happy to current Hope Springs Everlasting, Brooklyn-based artist Hein Koh’s first exhibition at Anton Kern spanning the primary and second ground galleries. The exhibition will foreground a brand new collection of works depicting cyclopean figures: one-eyed beings who observe however can not converse. The characters are stuffed with human pathos however lack noses, mouths, or ears—their faces distinguished solely by a big and watchful eye. Regardless of their facial shortcomings, in Koh’s world, these topics take part in mundane moments of ready, questioning, and enduring, reminiscent of being on the medical doctors, or caught within the rain.
In a Gustonian method, Koh’s cartoonish characters supply a semi-self portrait of the artist, popping out of the routines of her life during the last difficult yr. Koh, like the themes of her work, has had many appointments throughout this time. She has additionally cried, mothered, been to the hospital, grieved a pal’s demise, all issues depicted within the work—and he or she has confronted her personal mortality. Koh’s figures and exhibition as an entire are deeply knowledgeable by her latest breast most cancers analysis and therapy. In making the cyclops, gesturing out its uncomplicated varieties on canvas or slowly sketching it from her studio sofa, she was capable of course of, protect, and eventually transfer ahead from this painful expertise. Along with Koh’s tragicomic determine, the exhibition options: floral work impressed by the artist’s latest curiosity in gardening; two plaster sculptures; a handful of memento mori work; and roughly 20 pencil and charcoal drawings.
The 15 work featured in Hope Springs Everlasting are predominantly black and white (with inflections of neon-yellow, orange, or blue), and half function the eye-person prominently. This round-headed determine is an outdated pal, featured in works from 2015 and now re-emerging in Koh’s follow. Its inception got here from an identical expertise of religious looking out. After giving delivery to twins that yr, Koh began to course of her expertise by way of drawing. The routine of drawing eased fears associated to the chaotic, identity-shattering expertise of motherhood, and the mysticism and stress of getting two new child twins. Cyclops manifested itself then, in these post-hospital scrawls. In an identical means, the expertise of being recognized with breast most cancers necessitated processing and a necessity for “paring down.” This made room for cyclops to re-appear, recast because the artist’s major image throughout this therapeutic interval.
Koh’s grayscale work of one-eyed figures are featured on the primary ground. When assembled collectively, the repetition of enormous, backlit our bodies in a restricted palette recall the work of Los Angeles-based German artist Silke Otto-Knapp, who handed away in 2022 from ovarian most cancers, and, particularly, her 2020 exhibition In The Ready Room on the Renaissance Society. Otto-Knapp’s silhouetted, faceless individuals appeared again and again, in several groupings and poses, expectant, hoping to proceed into the subsequent a part of the plot. Likewise, Koh’s enigmatic figures are caught in moments of ready, uncertain of what’s to return. In two of the works, the figures are located in explicitly medical settings. Room With A View options the determine depicted in profile, wanting off the image airplane. Every thing in its rapid neighborhood–the stretcher mattress, the IV drip, the lumpy, disposable bedding–is black, white, and grey and painted with a closely cross-hatched method. Exterior, a superb solar units or rises, making the room really feel a bit brighter. In Radiate, 2024, a spherical physique rests upon an oblong “mattress.” Ceiling-mounted lights that explicitly recall breasts or eyes emit yellow and orange rays upon the determine’s chest. The one eye appears up into washy strokes of coloration. Radiate presents a poignant meditation on non-corporeality, and, because the work’s title suggests, radiation as a therapy for most cancers.
Different works within the present additionally converse to Koh’s most cancers prognosis and her corresponding emotional response in an abstracted means. Mammo, 2024, presents the determine wanting forward, peering ahead from behind a big mechanical object. Corrugated and sharp, the item resembles a vise, consisting of two parallel jaws with one of many jaws mounted and the opposite movable by a screw. In Koh’s vise, a round type, once more very breast-like, is the workpiece, firmly held, squashed into place, unmovable. This gadget recollects Lee Lozano’s instrument drawings, which investigated problems with gender and the physique. Each artists’ instruments seduce and repel us concurrently. Koh’s work has all the time handled dualities—from darkish and lightweight, naïveté/innocence and the melancholy that comes from lived experiences, to intercourse attraction and provocation, and extra. And in Mammo, it’s unclear if the vise helps or hurting the determine’s breast, an intentional ambiguity. Koh’s deft dealing with of duality is additional exemplified by her memento mori work; in her trio of tulip work; and within the portray for which the present is called. The most typical motifs deployed in memento mori works are skulls and wilting flowers. Both or each seem in 4 of Koh’s featured work: just a few petals fall from an in any other case full of life rose bouquet, which is depicted in opposition to a backdrop of scratched out black; and an enormous bunch of purple calla lilies, a flower that has lengthy been an emblem of early demise and resurrection, look worse for the wear and tear however proceed to carry on. Equally, three tulip work (with the titles Bloom, New Beginnings, and Night time) nod to the artist’s newfound inexperienced thumb and meditations on demise. Throughout therapy, the artist turned fascinated with gardening as she watched her crops in numerous phases–development, bloom, and decay. In an identical vein, the exhibition’s titular work is a portray of a grave illuminated by a rising solar. Hope Springs Everlasting is arguably probably the most colourful piece within the present, with brushy inexperienced grass, clumpy brown filth, and flourishing tulips. Although a grave has been dug, indicating a latest demise, the brilliant mild of a brand new day offers the viewer with a glimpse of hope, because the world remains to be capable of produce new life, new blooms, new vitality. One other day begins.