Koak - Artist - Perrotin

Despite their graphic, comic-inspired style, Koak's paintings expand thematically far beyond the traditional boundaries of the medium as it has developed in the United States. Instead she draws on elements of Japanese and European animation in works that address societal expectations of women, in particular propriety and domestic labor. Working much larger than comic-book scale, Koak makes expansive canvases in which her simple but expressive lines stand out against a muted, Disneyesque color palette. The women she paints are deeply emotive, pushing female identity beyond the primary-colored narratives typically associated with the printed medium.

“To project feelings into outer objects is the first way of symbolizing, and thus of conceiving those feelings,” wrote Susanne Langer in her vital philosophical treatise on the nature of art as a form of communication. She continues, “The conception of ‘self,’ which is usually thought to mark the beginning of actual memory, may possibly depend on this process of symbolically epitomizing our feelings.”¹ The expression of feeling is a signatory attribute of the paintings of Koak, and it is a force that she uses to articulate her bold, arresting style. Her canvases, saturated in mood, denote various emotive timbres through her deployment of color, line quality, spatial configuration, and gesture. The figurative subjects that populate her compositions— namely feminine figures and felines—moreover, are vehicles for expression and indexical devices that communicate a vast range of behaviors and emotional states. Koak has said that her paintings are “about archetypes of self that we have that are developed throughout our life or are internalized by experience”² and she suggests that she is playing with, and perhaps upending, these internalized archetypes.



1 Susanne K. Langer, Philosophy in a New Key: A Study in the Symbolism of Reason, Rite, and Art   (Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press, 1957), p.124.

2 Conversation with the artist, February 23, 2022.

In The Driver (2022) the viewer encounters the elegance of Koak’s soft, undulating lines that define the contours of the reclining figure who clasps her hands in a wistful gaze. Although the sinuous, graphic nature of the lines appears somewhat spontaneous and natural, it is actually carefully constructed. Much of Koak’s drafting happens before she applies the paint to the canvas. Each work is the result of sketches she first executes. Often she scans those sketches and then draws over the reproductions, establishing many layers, before then projecting the design onto canvas where she reworks or enlarges it in order to achieve the right shape and effect. The outcome is perfectly delineated contours that rhythmically and harmoniously converge to express the state of the subject. Unlike other paintings in the show, this work in particular exemplifies her process and she leaves out the intense palette present in the other paintings, the effect of which highlights its linear qualities. Koak has named the exhibition after this work, signaling to the viewer that the underlying import of the paintings has to do with agency—perhaps foremostly female, selfagency—and an interrogation of control: who is controlling whom? Relating to this Koak asserts, “I think when we’re imagining ourselves as a conglomeration of selves, there’s often the question of who rises up to the surface, which fractal is our true self.”⁶



6 Email to the author, February 22, 2022.