I’ve known Zoe Koke since fourth grade (braces, blonde ponytail in a scrunchie) and even then, she’s always had this instinct and conviction as an artist that I find both inspiring and rare. Her solo exhibition Unchained Melody at SMART OBJECTS in Los Angeles, spanning painting, sculpture, photography, and video feels like a culmination, bringing together many different mediums that she’s worked in for years and all of which she approaches with a quiet thoughtfulness, somehow brooding yet innocent, a little nostalgic and always tender. Koke is Canadian but has been based in Los Angeles since she moved there seven years ago to study at UCLA with icons like Barbara Kruger, Silke Otto-Knapp, and Cathy Opie. “Maybe the sentimentalism in my work is leaning into what I consider beautiful,” Koke suggests. “I am personally moved by beauty. Beauty becomes a way through — a point of connection — a hand-holding through the void.”
Tethys, Oil on canvas, 72 x 80 in, 2024
Unchained Melody,Digital video, 7’02, 2024
The title Unchained Melody comes from a video work in the show, which plays on a small CRT TV set, a broadcast of Elvis Presley live, covering the Righteous Brothers song of the same name, one of his final performances in 1977. “He’s the epitome of the American Dream killing people,” Koke explains. “This great star on his last legs, slurring his words on heroin, singing this song about time and how he longed for love — the sheer loneliness of that fucks me up.” For Koke, Presley is a symbol of the fall of our Roman Empire (she also included in the show a photo of the literal birthplace of Rome, which was later a World War II battleground and is today a deserted beach town in Italy.) But like with many subjects Koke finds herself drawn to, there’s a personal resonance as well: Elvis’s struggle with addiction finds correspondence to the addiction issues in her family. Also, her father’s mother was a Presely. Koke insists, “We aren’t related.”
Timbre, Oil on canvas 50 x 175 in, 2024
If I Forget You, Jerusalem(for Nick Flessa) Oil on canvas 62 x 85 in, 2024
Collective and personal origins offer fertile grounds for her practice. “In many ways, my childhood really defined me and my need to make art,” she says, explaining her early experiences of divorce, instability, her parents’ remarriages, and spending the first years of her life “practically raised by babysitters” were formative (she lists off the babysitter’s names: Brenda, Wanda, Lisa, Jean). This might shed light on the mood of the sculptures in Unchained Melody incorporating a “sort of residue of childlike scavenging” — objects like orange peels, pomegranates, shells, chintzy wedding bells, and a peacock toy, all the scale that can fit in the palm of one’s hand. There’s a fragility to the show’s sculptural language too. A rabbit trap, for example, dangles from a door frame. “I like when objects feel like you should participate. You want to reach out and touch them,” says Koke.
Angels, Porcelain, spray paint 6 x 6 x 3, 2024
Lotus eaters, Oil on canvas 50 x 50 in, 2024
And then there’s the paintings, which anchor the show. With their pastoral blues and greens, they bring to mind water, sky, forests, and brush, and even when they’re big and murky, there’s always a sense of delicate vulnerability. Salmon, blush, peach, and vermillion make appearances too. “The pink you see against your eyelids when you wake up,” suggests Zoe, explaining there’s a meditation on vision, immersion, and the blurry nature of memory at play. While her background is varied, including designing costume for film and a brief stint at fashion school, painting is the medium Koke has become best known for of late (though she’s been working away at it in her garage for years). In recent months, she had a solo painting show in Zurich at Mai 36, as well as exhibited in a group show in Paris at Lo Brutto Stahl and at a couple galleries in London, Alice Amati and Lindon&Co. With palpable influences from Joan Mitchell (the rhythmic layered brush strokes), Mark Rothko (the soft-edged stains), and even Claude Monet (the serene impressions of landscape), Koke’s work fits squarely in the canon of abstract painting, and as it turns out, the market is particularly hot for women abstract painters right now. Riding this wave, Koke has shows coming up at Linseed Projects in Shanghai and Helen Anrather in New York, as well as a show with both painting and video at april april. However the tide of painting trends may ebb and flow, Koke is committed to a roving approach to medium in her practice. “I am disinterested in having a signature gesture. I want to be surprised by my work.”
Mana Elia, Oil on canvas 72 x 80 in, 2023
Cyclops (my sister’s target) Inkjet print, framed, 20 x 23 in, 2024
Icebreaker, Inkjet print, framed 56.5 x 42.5 in, 2020
Zoe Koke’s Unchained Melody
Text by Whitney Mallett
I’ve known Zoe Koke since fourth grade (braces, blonde ponytail in a scrunchie) and even then, she’s always had this instinct and conviction as an artist that I find both inspiring and rare. Her solo exhibition Unchained Melody at SMART OBJECTS in Los Angeles, spanning painting, sculpture, photography, and video feels like a culmination, bringing together many different mediums that she’s worked in for years and all of which she approaches with a quiet thoughtfulness, somehow brooding yet innocent, a little nostalgic and always tender. Koke is Canadian but has been based in Los Angeles since she moved there seven years ago to study at UCLA with icons like Barbara Kruger, Silke Otto-Knapp, and Cathy Opie. “Maybe the sentimentalism in my work is leaning into what I consider beautiful,” Koke suggests. “I am personally moved by beauty. Beauty becomes a way through — a point of connection — a hand-holding through the void.”
Tethys, Oil on canvas, 72 x 80 in, 2024
Unchained Melody, Digital video, 7’02, 2024
The title Unchained Melody comes from a video work in the show, which plays on a small CRT TV set, a broadcast of Elvis Presley live, covering the Righteous Brothers song of the same name, one of his final performances in 1977. “He’s the epitome of the American Dream killing people,” Koke explains. “This great star on his last legs, slurring his words on heroin, singing this song about time and how he longed for love — the sheer loneliness of that fucks me up.” For Koke, Presley is a symbol of the fall of our Roman Empire (she also included in the show a photo of the literal birthplace of Rome, which was later a World War II battleground and is today a deserted beach town in Italy.) But like with many subjects Koke finds herself drawn to, there’s a personal resonance as well: Elvis’s struggle with addiction finds correspondence to the addiction issues in her family. Also, her father’s mother was a Presely. Koke insists, “We aren’t related.”
Timbre, Oil on canvas
50 x 175 in, 2024
If I Forget You, Jerusalem (for Nick Flessa)
Oil on canvas 62 x 85 in, 2024
Collective and personal origins offer fertile grounds for her practice. “In many ways, my childhood really defined me and my need to make art,” she says, explaining her early experiences of divorce, instability, her parents’ remarriages, and spending the first years of her life “practically raised by babysitters” were formative (she lists off the babysitter’s names: Brenda, Wanda, Lisa, Jean). This might shed light on the mood of the sculptures in Unchained Melody incorporating a “sort of residue of childlike scavenging” — objects like orange peels, pomegranates, shells, chintzy wedding bells, and a peacock toy, all the scale that can fit in the palm of one’s hand. There’s a fragility to the show’s sculptural language too. A rabbit trap, for example, dangles from a door frame. “I like when objects feel like you should participate. You want to reach out and touch them,” says Koke.
Angels, Porcelain, spray paint
6 x 6 x 3, 2024
Lotus eaters, Oil on canvas 50 x 50 in, 2024
And then there’s the paintings, which anchor the show. With their pastoral blues and greens, they bring to mind water, sky, forests, and brush, and even when they’re big and murky, there’s always a sense of delicate vulnerability. Salmon, blush, peach, and vermillion make appearances too. “The pink you see against your eyelids when you wake up,” suggests Zoe, explaining there’s a meditation on vision, immersion, and the blurry nature of memory at play. While her background is varied, including designing costume for film and a brief stint at fashion school, painting is the medium Koke has become best known for of late (though she’s been working away at it in her garage for years). In recent months, she had a solo painting show in Zurich at Mai 36, as well as exhibited in a group show in Paris at Lo Brutto Stahl and at a couple galleries in London, Alice Amati and Lindon&Co. With palpable influences from Joan Mitchell (the rhythmic layered brush strokes), Mark Rothko (the soft-edged stains), and even Claude Monet (the serene impressions of landscape), Koke’s work fits squarely in the canon of abstract painting, and as it turns out, the market is particularly hot for women abstract painters right now. Riding this wave, Koke has shows coming up at Linseed Projects in Shanghai and Helen Anrather in New York, as well as a show with both painting and video at april april. However the tide of painting trends may ebb and flow, Koke is committed to a roving approach to medium in her practice. “I am disinterested in having a signature gesture. I want to be surprised by my work.”
Mana Elia, Oil on canvas 72 x 80 in, 2023
Cyclops (my sister’s target) Inkjet print, framed, 20 x 23 in, 2024
Icebreaker, Inkjet print, framed
56.5 x 42.5 in, 2020
Blood Meridian II, Oil on canvas 16 x 20 in, 2024