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Jeff Koons

Jeff Koons, Gazing Ball (Titian Pastoral Concert), 2016 Oil on canvas, glass, and aluminum, 60 × 74 × 14 ¾ inches (152.4 × 188 × 37.5 cm)© Jeff Koons, photo by Fredrik Nilsen

Jeff Koons, Gazing Ball (Titian Pastoral Concert), 2016

Oil on canvas, glass, and aluminum, 60 × 74 × 14 ¾ inches (152.4 × 188 × 37.5 cm)
© Jeff Koons, photo by Fredrik Nilsen

Jeff Koons, Gazing Ball (Manet Luncheon on the Grass), 2014–15 Oil on canvas, glass, and aluminum, 63 × 81 ¼ × 14 ¾ inches (160 × 206.4 × 37.5 cm)© Jeff Koons

Jeff Koons, Gazing Ball (Manet Luncheon on the Grass), 2014–15

Oil on canvas, glass, and aluminum, 63 × 81 ¼ × 14 ¾ inches (160 × 206.4 × 37.5 cm)
© Jeff Koons

Jeff Koons, Antiquity (Farnese Bull), 2009–12 Oil on canvas, 108 × 84 inches (274.3 × 213.4 cm)© Jeff Koons

Jeff Koons, Antiquity (Farnese Bull), 2009–12

Oil on canvas, 108 × 84 inches (274.3 × 213.4 cm)
© Jeff Koons

Jeff Koons, Antiquity 3, 2009–11 Oil on canvas, 102 × 138 inches (259.1 × 350.5 cm)© Jeff Koons

Jeff Koons, Antiquity 3, 2009–11

Oil on canvas, 102 × 138 inches (259.1 × 350.5 cm)
© Jeff Koons

Jeff Koons, Metallic Venus, 2010–12 Mirror-polished stainless steel with transparent color coating and live flowering plants, 100 × 52 × 40 inches (254 × 132.1 × 101.6 cm), edition of 3 + 1 AP© Jeff Koons

Jeff Koons, Metallic Venus, 2010–12

Mirror-polished stainless steel with transparent color coating and live flowering plants, 100 × 52 × 40 inches (254 × 132.1 × 101.6 cm), edition of 3 + 1 AP
© Jeff Koons

Jeff Koons, Gorilla, 2006–12 Black granite, 96 × 76 × 36 inches (243.8 × 193 × 91.4 cm), edition of 3 + 1 AP© Jeff Koons, photo by Douglas M. Parker Studio

Jeff Koons, Gorilla, 2006–12

Black granite, 96 × 76 × 36 inches (243.8 × 193 × 91.4 cm), edition of 3 + 1 AP
© Jeff Koons, photo by Douglas M. Parker Studio

Jeff Koons Coloring Book, 1997–2005 Mirror-polished stainless steel with transparent color coating 222 × 131 1/2 × 9 1/8 inches (563.9 × 334 × 23.2 cm) 1 of 5 unique versions Installation at the Royal Academy, London © Jeff Koons

Jeff Koons Coloring Book, 1997–2005

Mirror-polished stainless steel with transparent color coating 222 × 131 1/2 × 9 1/8 inches (563.9 × 334 × 23.2 cm) 1 of 5 unique versions Installation at the Royal Academy, London © Jeff Koons

Jeff Koons, Bluepoles, 2000 Oil on canvas, 120 × 168 inches (304.8 × 426.7 cm)© Jeff Koons

Jeff Koons, Bluepoles, 2000

Oil on canvas, 120 × 168 inches (304.8 × 426.7 cm)
© Jeff Koons

Jeff Koons Split-Rocker, 2000 Stainless steel, geotextile fabric, internal irrigation system, live flowering plants 446 7/8 × 483 1/8 × 427 5/8 inches (1,135.1 × 1,227.1 × 1,086.2 cm) Installation at Rockefeller Center®, New York © Jeff Koons, photo by Tom Powel

Jeff Koons Split-Rocker, 2000

Stainless steel, geotextile fabric, internal irrigation system, live flowering plants 446 7/8 × 483 1/8 × 427 5/8 inches (1,135.1 × 1,227.1 × 1,086.2 cm) Installation at Rockefeller Center®, New York © Jeff Koons, photo by Tom Powel

Jeff Koons Balloon Flower (Orange), 1995–2000 Mirror-polished stainless steel with transparent color coating 133 3/4 × 112 1/4 × 102 1/4 inches (340 × 285 × 260 cm) 1 of 5 unique versions © Jeff Koons

Jeff Koons Balloon Flower (Orange), 1995–2000

Mirror-polished stainless steel with transparent color coating 133 3/4 × 112 1/4 × 102 1/4 inches (340 × 285 × 260 cm) 1 of 5 unique versions © Jeff Koons

About

I like to think that when you leave the room, the art leaves the room. Art is about your own possibilities as a human being. It’s about your own excitement, your own potential, and what you can become. It affirms your existence.
—Jeff Koons

Jeff Koons rose to prominence in the mid-1980s as part of a generation of artists exploring the meaning of art and spectacle in a media-saturated era. With his stated artistic intention to “communicate with the masses,” Koons makes use of conceptual constructs—including the ancient, the everyday, and the sublime—creating luxurious icons and elaborate tableaux, which, beneath their captivating exteriors, engage the viewer in a metaphysical dialogue with cultural history.

Born in York, Pennsylvania in 1955, Koons studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore and, receiving a BFA from the latter in 1976. Since his first solo exhibition in 1980, his work has evolved from small-scale assemblages of toys and found objects to his now iconic monumental works, including huge balloon animals rendered in mirror-polished stainless steel, as well as flowering topiary sculptures, such as Puppy (1992), which is permanently installed at the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao.

Koons draws attention to the continuity of images as they pass through time, combining art historical reference with vernacular images and objects, from common suburban products and mass media to symbols of sexuality and transcendence. Beginning with Inflatables (1978–79), a series inspired by the readymade, Koons created six series of innovative works in less than a decade including Pre-New (1979–80), The New (1980–87), Equilibrium (1983–93), Luxury & Degradation (1986), and Statuary (1986). His interest in popular culture expanded in the Banality series (1988), which included sculptures of recognizable figures such as Michael Jackson and Bubbles (1988)—a nearly life-size gold-leaf porcelain statue of the pop singer with his pet chimpanzee. In 1989, Koons presented Made in Heaven (1989–91), a series centered on him and his then-wife in sexually explicit poses, frequently in fairytale settings, evoking the stark bodily presence of the nudes depicted by French Realist painters.

During the mid-1990s, Koons expanded his Pop sensibility through the Celebration series (1994–): hyperrealistic, brightly colored paintings and large-scale sculptures depicting vernacular images and forms such as plastic figurines, Play-Doh, and jewelry. Conflating the readymade and the monumental, these works attest to Koons’s ongoing fascination with childlike consciousness and communication; transforming humble objects into abstract symbols of transcendence and the biological. In 2000, seven new works by Koons debuted at the Deutsche Guggenheim: the Easyfun-Ethereal paintings. Derived from the optimistic, colorful Easyfun series (1999–2000), these layered, collage-like tableaux depict cut-out photographs of packaged foods, paradisiacal landscapes, and fragments of women’s faces, limbs, hair, clothing, and accessories. Attesting to Koons’s interest in the simple pleasures of visual culture, Easyfun-Ethereal would eventually be expanded to twenty-four paintings, presenting uncanny, imaginative panoramas.

Koons’s dialogue with the readymade and American pop culture continued in his Popeye (2002–13) and Hulk Elvis series (2004–), which incorporate large-scale inflatable characters, either alone or combined with other objects and images, creating playful, often discordant relationships. Starting in 2008, the Antiquity series highlights Koons interest in metaphysics, a line of inquiry that was central to the making of the Equilibrium works and that continues to evolve in his latest works in production.

Among Koons’s recent works is the Gazing Ball series (2012–), in which he makes direct reference to canonical works art. In each piece, a blue mirrored, hand-blown glass gazing ball reflects its surroundings, uniting painting, sculpture, and architecture in order to multiply sensory experience. Like much of his work, the Gazing Ball series reactivates and intensifies familiar scenes, whether from legend or the everyday, reflecting and affirming viewers and their environments.

Jeff Koons

Photo: Sabastian Kim/August Image, LLC

Website

jeffkoons.com

Josh Kline, Skittles, 2014, commercial fridge, lightbox, and blended liquids in bottles, 86 ½ × 127 ½ × 41 inches (219.7 × 323.9 × 104.1 cm) © Josh Kline. Photo:  © Timothy Schenck

Laws of Motion

Catalyzed by Laws of Motion—a group exhibition pairing artworks from the 1980s on by Jeff Koons, Cady Noland, Rosemarie Trockel, and Jeff Wall with contemporary sculptures by Josh Kline and Anicka Yi—Wyatt Allgeier discusses the convergences and divergences in these artists’ practices with an eye to the economic worlds from which they spring.

The cover of the Fall 2019 Gagosian Quarterly magazine. Artwork by Nathaniel Mary Quinn

Now available
Gagosian Quarterly Fall 2019

The Fall 2019 issue of Gagosian Quarterly is now available, featuring a detail from Sinking (2019) by Nathaniel Mary Quinn on its cover.

Glenstone Museum.

Intimate Grandeur: Glenstone Museum

Paul Goldberger tracks the evolution of Mitchell and Emily Rales’s Glenstone Museum in Potomac, Maryland. Set amid 230 acres of pristine landscape and housing a world-class collection of modern and contemporary art, this graceful complex of pavilions, designed by architects Thomas Phifer and Partners, opened to the public in the fall of 2018.

Still from video Visions of the Self: Jenny Saville on Rembrandt

Visions of the Self: Jenny Saville on Rembrandt

Jenny Saville reveals the process behind her new self-portrait, painted in response to Rembrandt’s masterpiece Self-Portrait with Two Circles.

Jeff Koons: Easyfun-Ethereal

Jeff Koons: Easyfun-Ethereal

Learn more about Jeff Koons’s Easyfun-Ethereal series in this video featuring Rebecca Sternthal, one of the organizers behind the most recent exhibition of these works in New York.

RxART

The Bigger Picture
RxART

Derek Blasberg speaks with Diane Brown, president and founder of RxART, and with contributing artists Dan Colen, Urs Fischer, and Jeff Koons about the transformative power of visual art.

Jeff Koons

The Bigger Picture
Jeff Koons

Jeff Koons speaks with Alison McDonald and Maura Harty about his longstanding commitment to protecting the rights of children.

Jeff Koons Glenn Fuhrman

In Conversation
Jeff Koons Glenn Fuhrman

The FLAG Art Foundation hosted a conversation between Jeff Koons and FLAG founder Glenn Fuhrman, in which the two discuss the dichotomy between sexuality and childhood innocence in Koons’s oeuvre, remaking Made in Heaven with Lady Gaga, what drives Koons to make more work, and several works including Cat on a Clothesline (1994–2001) and Winter Bears (1988).

The Last 36 Hours

The Last 36 Hours

Derek Blasberg speaks with Scott Rothkopf, a curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art, about the last thirty-six hours of the Jeff Koons retrospective, which also marked the end of the museum’s tenure in uptown Manhattan.

Split-Rocker: A Landscaping Perspective

Split-Rocker: A Landscaping Perspective

Jeff Koons’s flowering sculpture Split-Rocker, at once imposing and adorable, has cast a spell on New York City’s Rockefeller Center. Derek Blasberg interviews Matt Donham, Koons’s landscape designer on the project, to find out more.

Jeff Koons: A Retrospective

Jeff Koons: A Retrospective

Jeff Koons’s first, mammoth one-man show opens at the Whitney today, which is also the last show at the museum’s Madison Avenue location.

Fairs, Events & Announcements

Gagosian’s booth at TEFAF New York 2023. Artwork, left to right: © Jeff Koons, © Peter Halley. Photo: Sebastiano Pellion di Persano

Art Fair

TEFAF New York 2023
Richard Prince, Jeff Koons, Peter Halley

May 12–16, 2023, booth 350
Park Avenue Armory, New York
www.tefaf.com

Gagosian is pleased to announce its participation in TEFAF New York 2023, with a special presentation of works by Richard Prince, Jeff Koons, and Peter Halley. Made between 1989 and 1994, they employ strategies of appropriation, figuration, and abstraction, responding with wry humor to the eclectic postmodernism and moral panics of a culturally volatile era. Three decades later, these works remain provocative and represent a pivotal development in the career of each artist.

Gagosian’s booth at TEFAF New York 2023. Artwork, left to right: © Jeff Koons, © Peter Halley. Photo: Sebastiano Pellion di Persano

Gagosian’s booth at Art Basel Miami Beach 2022. Artwork, left to right: © Gerhard Richter; © Amoako Boafo; © Richard Prince; © 2022 Judd Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; © Richard Diebenkorn Foundation; © The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; © Stanley Whitney. Photo: Sebastiano Pellion di Persano

Art Fair

Art Basel Miami Beach 2022

December 1–3, 2022, booth D5
Miami Beach Convention Center
artbasel.com

Gagosian is pleased to present a selection of modern and contemporary works at Art Basel Miami Beach 2022. Returning to Miami for the fair’s twentieth anniversary, the gallery is honored to have participated each year the fair has been held.

Gagosian’s booth at Art Basel Miami Beach 2022. Artwork, left to right: © Gerhard Richter; © Amoako Boafo; © Richard Prince; © 2022 Judd Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; © Richard Diebenkorn Foundation; © The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York; © Stanley Whitney. Photo: Sebastiano Pellion di Persano

Theaster Gates, American Tapestry, 2019 © Theaster Gates

Art Fair

Art Basel OVR: Pioneers
Innovate, Originate, Overturn: Modern and Contemporary Pioneers

March 24–27, 2021

One of a hundred selected galleries, Gagosian is pleased to present Innovate, Originate, Overturn: Modern and Contemporary Pioneers, an exclusive online project for Art Basel’s launch of OVR: Pioneers. The presentation will include works by Helen FrankenthalerTheaster GatesAndreas GurskyDamien HirstJeff KoonsNam June Paik, and Rachel Whiteread.

Theaster Gates, American Tapestry, 2019 © Theaster Gates

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Museum Exhibitions

Jeff Koons, Venus, 2016–20 © Jeff Koons. Photo: courtesy National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia

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Jeff Koons in
NGV Triennial 2020

December 19, 2020–April 18, 2021
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia
www.ngv.vic.gov.au

Featuring major new commissions and recent works by over 100 artists, the NGV Triennial brings contemporary art, design, and architecture into dialogue, offering a visually arresting and thought-provoking view of the world today. The exhibition celebrates the work of some of the world’s most accomplished artists and designers, including Jeff Koons, while also giving voice to emerging practitioners. Koons’s Venus (2016–20) is the first sculpture from the artist’s new Porcelain series to be unveiled. The series juxtaposes classical ideals of beauty with sophisticated contemporary production technologies.

Jeff Koons, Venus, 2016–20 © Jeff Koons. Photo: courtesy National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia

Installation view, Inspiraatio—Nykytaide & Klassikot, Ateneum, Finnish National Gallery, Helsinki, June 18–September 20, 2020. Artwork, left to right: © Glenn Brown, © Wolfe von Lenkiewicz. Photo: Hannu Pakarinen

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Inspiraatio—Nykytaide & Klassikot

June 18–September 20, 2020
Ateneum, Finnish National Gallery, Helsinki
ateneum.fi

This exhibition, whose title translates to Inspiration—Contemporary Art and Classics, explores contemporary art inspired by iconic masterpieces. Here, the original works are referenced through replicas, prints, plaster casts, and an abundance of archival materials. This exhibition has traveled from the Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, under the title Inspiration: Iconic Works. Work by Georg Baselitz, Glenn Brown, Jeff Koons, and Jenny Saville is included.

Installation view, Inspiraatio—Nykytaide & Klassikot, Ateneum, Finnish National Gallery, Helsinki, June 18–September 20, 2020. Artwork, left to right: © Glenn Brown, © Wolfe von Lenkiewicz. Photo: Hannu Pakarinen

Takashi Murakami, Open Your Hands Wide, Embrace Happiness!, 2010 © 2010 Takashi Murakami/Kaikai Kiki Co., Ltd. All rights reserved

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Happy!

October 27, 2019–July 5, 2020
NSU Art Museum, Nova Southeastern University, Fort Lauderdale, Florida
nsuartmuseum.org

Happy! presents contemporary works produced by artists who aim to engage the viewer emotionally. In their works, as in life, sorrow and happiness are intertwined. The exhibition follows a multigenerational trajectory from the mid-twentieth century to today. Work by Jeff Koons, Takashi Murakami, Richard Prince, and Andy Warhol is included.

Takashi Murakami, Open Your Hands Wide, Embrace Happiness!, 2010 © 2010 Takashi Murakami/Kaikai Kiki Co., Ltd. All rights reserved

Glenn Brown, Reproduction, 2014 © Glenn Brown

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Inspiration
Iconic Works

February 20–May 17, 2020
Nationalmuseum, Stockholm
www.nationalmuseum.se

This exhibition presents contemporary art that draws inspiration from historic masterpieces. A selection of paintings, plaster sculptures, drawings, graphic prints, and applied arts from Nationalmuseum’s vast collections are displayed in dialogue with contemporary objects. Work by Glenn Brown, Jeff Koons, Jenny Saville, and Cindy Sherman is included.

Glenn Brown, Reproduction, 2014 © Glenn Brown

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Press

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