Born in 1981 in Lansing, Michigan, USA
Lives and works in San Francisco, USA

Koak

Koak’s work portrays the complex duality of identity and human nature through a mastery of the line which extends across drawing, painting and sculpture. Rendered with exquisite technique and effortless mark-making, her emotionally charged figures and landscapes are imbued with a compelling sense of agency and inner life.


 

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education

2016
  MFA in Comics, California College of the Arts, San Francisco, California, USA

2011
  BFA in Individualized Studies, California College of the Arts, San Francisco, California, USA

solo shows

2025
  The Window Set, Charleston in Lewes, UK

2024
  Lake Margrethe, Perrotin, Paris, France

2023
  The Canary, Bibeau Krueger, New York City, USA
  Letter to Myself (when the world is on fire), Altman Siegel, San Francisco, USA

2022
  The Driver, Perrotin, Hong Kong, PRC

2020
  Return to Feeling, Altman Siegel, San Francisco, USA

2019
  Holding Breath, Union Pacific, London, UK

2018
  Breaking the Prairie, Ghebaly Gallery, Los Angeles, USA
  Seed for Planting, Walden, Buenos Aires, Argentina

2017
  Bathers, Alter Space, San Francisco, USA

group shows

2024
  Infinite Regress: Mystical Abstraction from the Permanent Collection and Beyond, Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, Missouri, USA 

2023
  Dust Piles Us Up, Suhe Haus, Shanghai, PRC
  October +, Perrotin, Paris, France
  Crafting Radicality: Bay Area Artists from the Svane Gift, de Young Museum, San Francisco, USA
  Summer Escape: Part One, Gaa Gallery, Provincetown, Massachusetts, USA
  I've Got a Feeling. The 5 Senses in Contemporary Art, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Angers, France

2022
  I’m Stepping High, I’m Drifting, and There I Go Leaping, XIAO Museum, Rizhao, China 
  Heroic Bodies, Rudolph Tegners Museum and Statue Park, Dronningmølle, Denmark
  AMT Salon, Haverkampf Galerie, Berlin, Germany 
  A Few Small Nips, Mrs. Gallery, Maspeth, New York, USA
  Familiars, Et al., San Francisco, USA

2021
  New Time: Art and Feminisms in the 21st Century, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive | BAMPFA, California, USA
  Traces, Haverkampf Galerie, Berlin, Germany
  Women on Women—Don’t Call Me Muse!, Collaborations, Copenhagen, Denmark
  Triple Burner, Union Pacific, London, UK

2020
  100 Drawings from Now, The Drawing Center, New York City, USA

2018
  The Larkin Showroom, Vacation, New York City, USA
  Liquid Dreams, Ghebaly Gallery, Los Angeles, USA
  Palo Santo, Ratio 3, San Francisco, USA
  American Fine Arts—Part II: On the Tip of My Tongue, BBQLA at Cloaca Projects, San Francisco, USA
  You Are Who I Think You Are, American Medium, New York City, USA

2017
  Female Gaze, Museum of Sex, New York City, USA
  Therianthropy, Laura Bartlett Gallery, London, England, UK
  Teeter Totter, BBQLA, Los Angeles, USA
  3. The Set, Et al. at Holiday Forever, Jackson Hole, Wyoming, USA
  On Elizabeth, Olsen Gruin, New York City, USA
  Plucked, 100%, San Francisco, USA

2016
  The Weeping Line, Alter Space at Four Six One Nine, Los Angeles, USA
  Pleasures & Treasures, Ampersand Gallery & Fine Books, Portland, Oregon, USA
  The Bad Case of the Uglies, Et al. etc., San Francisco, USA

2015
  It Does and It Doesn't, Alter Space, San Francisco, USA

public collections

Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, Missouri, USA
Musée des Beaux-Arts d’Angers, Angers, France
de Young, San Francisco, California, USA

awards

2022
  Tamarind Institute Residency, Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA

2020
  Eureka Fellowship, Fleishhacker Foundation, San Francisco, USA

2018
  Liquitex Residency, Minnesota Street Project, San Francisco, USA

  • September 1, 2024
    Juxtapoz — 11 PAGES

  • February 2, 2023
    Juxtapoz — 5 PAGES

  • January 26, 2023
    Nob Hill Gazette — 4 PAGES

  • January 20, 2023
    Squarecylinder — 4 PAGES

  • July 11, 2022
    CoBo Social — 10 PAGES

Extract from "New Time: Art and Feminisms in the 21st Century", published by University of California, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, 2021.

by Claire Frost

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.

Extract from "Archetypes of the Self in Living Color", press release, 2022.

by Apsara DiQuinzio

“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.” 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” and she suggests that she is playing with, and perhaps upending, these internalized archetypes.



...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.”

2025

Takashi MURAKAMI, Paola PIVI, Josh SPERLING, Klara KRISTALOVA, KOAK, Laurent GRASSO, Nick DOYLE, Joaquín BOZ, Thilo HEINZMANN, LEE Bae

January 10, 2025 - February 28, 2025

Seoul

10 Dosan-daero 45-gil, Gangnam-gu

Cabinets of Curiosities

2024

Koak

August 31, 2024 - October 5, 2024

paris

76 rue de turenne 75003 Paris

Lake Margrethe

2023

ELMGREEN & DRAGSET, JR, Koak, Jean-Marie APPRIOU, Iván ARGOTE, Daniel ARSHAM, Genesis BELANGER, Anna-Eva BERGMAN, Sophie CALLE, Julian CHARRIÈRE, Johan CRETEN, Jean-Philippe DELHOMME, Mathilde DENIZE, Lionel ESTÈVE, Jens FÄNGE, Bernard FRIZE, Laurent GRASSO, Vivian GREVEN, Hans HARTUNG, Charles HASCOËT, Thilo HEINZMANN, John HENDERSON, Leslie HEWITT, Gregor HILDEBRANDT, Dora JERIDI, Susumu KAMIJO, Bharti KHER, Klara KRISTALOVA, Georges MATHIEU, Takashi MURAKAMI, Sophia NARRETT, Katherina OLSCHBAUR, Danielle ORCHARD, Jean-Michel OTHONIEL, Paola PIVI, Gabriel RICO, Claude RUTAULT, Emily Mae SMITH, Jesús Rafael SOTO, Josh SPERLING, Tatiana TROUVÉ, Xavier VEILHAN, Bernar VENET, Pieter VERMEERSCH, LEE Bae, QI Zhuo, SHIM Moon-Seup

October 16, 2023 - November 10, 2023

paris

60 RUE DE TURENNE 75003 PARIS
2bis avenue matignon 75008 Paris

Matignon - October+ group show

2022

Koak

May 21, 2022 - July 30, 2022

hong kong

807, K11 ATELIER Victoria Dockside, 18 Salisbury Road, Tsim Sha Tsui

The Driver
"LAKE MARGRETHE" AT PERROTIN PARIS

"LAKE MARGRETHE" AT PERROTIN PARIS

Koak