Since reading this interview with Terence Koh, I’ve been a little irritated about it. Koh comes off as materialistic, narcissistic, and nihilistic. Which is part of the point, and part of the appeal—his art and personage embody a particular moment (Dec 2007, Dow: ~14,000), in a particular place (downtown New York). Whatever. I get it. But damn, give me something more than art that approximates a cocaine hangover—manic buzz that has long since dissipated into headache. Whether Koh stacks glass vitrines filled with his own gold-plated shit or hangs Janus-faced porcelain casts of his own head, there’s never any “there” there.

Which brings me to my point. Julian Schnabel was a terrible painter beginning with his emergence in the 1970s and clear through the 1980s. Nonetheless, at that time his self-proclaimed genius did much to convince Wall Street collectors that he was the real deal, worth spending piles of cash on. (Sound familiar?)

And now? The Diving Bell and the Butterfly! Some of the visuals—like the girl’s hair flowing back, or the calving glaciers. There’s real emotional gravity there. Though I wasn’t floored overall, I can’t deny that there’s a delicately controlled sensibility, and a precise command of narrative and emotion, that is the product of a masterful intelligence.

Will Koh somehow become Julian Schnabel by 2030? I doubt it. But give a guy some credit, where credit’s due: He knows his way around web design. Asianpunkboy.com is a pretty entrancing take on Dirt Web design—Koh’s clearly in control, with lots of HTML programming chops. I guess you can take the boy out of Asian America, but you can’t take the Asian American out of the boy?