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Extended through September 18, 2014

Jeff Koons

Split-Rocker

June 25–September 18, 2014
Rockefeller Center, New York

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Installation video

Works Exhibited

Jeff Koons, Split-Rocker, 2000 Stainless steel, soil, geotextile fabric, internal irrigation system, and live flowering plants, 37 feet 2 ⅞ inches × 40 feet 3 ⅛ inches × 35 7 ⅝ inches (11.35 × 12.27 × 10.86 m), edition of 1 + 1 AP© Jeff Koons. Photo: Tom Powel Imaging

Jeff Koons, Split-Rocker, 2000

Stainless steel, soil, geotextile fabric, internal irrigation system, and live flowering plants, 37 feet 2 ⅞ inches × 40 feet 3 ⅛ inches × 35 7 ⅝ inches (11.35 × 12.27 × 10.86 m), edition of 1 + 1 AP
© Jeff Koons. Photo: Tom Powel Imaging

Jeff Koons, Split-Rocker, 2000 Stainless steel, soil, geotextile fabric, internal irrigation system, and live flowering plants, 37 feet 2 ⅞ inches × 40 feet 3 ⅛ inches × 35 7 ⅝ inches (11.35 × 12.27 × 10.86 m), edition of 1 + 1 AP© Jeff Koons. Photo: Tom Powel Imaging

Jeff Koons, Split-Rocker, 2000

Stainless steel, soil, geotextile fabric, internal irrigation system, and live flowering plants, 37 feet 2 ⅞ inches × 40 feet 3 ⅛ inches × 35 7 ⅝ inches (11.35 × 12.27 × 10.86 m), edition of 1 + 1 AP
© Jeff Koons. Photo: Tom Powel Imaging

Jeff Koons, Split-Rocker, 2000 Stainless steel, soil, geotextile fabric, internal irrigation system, and live flowering plants, 37 feet 2 ⅞ inches × 40 feet 3 ⅛ inches × 35 7 ⅝ inches (11.35 × 12.27 × 10.86 m), edition of 1 + 1 AP© Jeff Koons. Photo: Tom Powel Imaging

Jeff Koons, Split-Rocker, 2000

Stainless steel, soil, geotextile fabric, internal irrigation system, and live flowering plants, 37 feet 2 ⅞ inches × 40 feet 3 ⅛ inches × 35 7 ⅝ inches (11.35 × 12.27 × 10.86 m), edition of 1 + 1 AP
© Jeff Koons. Photo: Tom Powel Imaging

Jeff Koons, Split-Rocker, 2000 Stainless steel, soil, geotextile fabric, internal irrigation system, and live flowering plants, 37 feet 2 ⅞ inches × 40 feet 3 ⅛ inches × 35 7 ⅝ inches (11.35 × 12.27 × 10.86 m), edition of 1 + 1 AP© Jeff Koons. Photo: Tom Powel Imaging

Jeff Koons, Split-Rocker, 2000

Stainless steel, soil, geotextile fabric, internal irrigation system, and live flowering plants, 37 feet 2 ⅞ inches × 40 feet 3 ⅛ inches × 35 7 ⅝ inches (11.35 × 12.27 × 10.86 m), edition of 1 + 1 AP
© Jeff Koons. Photo: Tom Powel Imaging

Jeff Koons, Split-Rocker, 2000 Stainless steel, soil, geotextile fabric, internal irrigation system, and live flowering plants, 37 feet 2 ⅞ inches × 40 feet 3 ⅛ inches × 35 7 ⅝ inches (11.35 × 12.27 × 10.86 m), edition of 1 + 1 AP© Jeff Koons. Photo: Tom Powel Imaging

Jeff Koons, Split-Rocker, 2000

Stainless steel, soil, geotextile fabric, internal irrigation system, and live flowering plants, 37 feet 2 ⅞ inches × 40 feet 3 ⅛ inches × 35 7 ⅝ inches (11.35 × 12.27 × 10.86 m), edition of 1 + 1 AP
© Jeff Koons. Photo: Tom Powel Imaging

About

This summer, Jeff Koons’s Split-Rocker makes its New York City debut at Rockefeller Center, to coincide with the opening of the artist’s retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art. Presented by Gagosian and organized by the Public Art Fund and Tishman Speyer, Split-Rocker is a spectacular planted form that towers over thirty-seven feet high and features over fifty thousand flowering plants. First exhibited at Palais des Papes, Avignon, France, in 2000, it was subsequently shown at the Château de Versailles (2008), France, and Fondation Beyeler (2012), Riehen/Basel, Switzerland. It is also in the collection of the Glenstone private museum in Potomac, Maryland, where it has been on view since June of 2013.

Consistent with Koons’s persistent fascination with dichotomy and the in-between, the inspiration for Split-Rocker came when he decided to split and combine two similar but different toy rockers—a pony belonging to his son, and a dinosaur (“Dino”). The slippage or “split” between the different halves of the heads gives an almost Cubist aspect to the composition. As the model was enlarged to the scale of a small house, the split became an opening, a profile, and a light shaft. In contrast to his legendary Puppy of 1992, which was presented by the Public Art Fund at Rockefeller Center in the summer of 2000, Split-Rocker suggests the idea of a fantasy shelter. Whereas the singular form of Puppy is closed and sculptural, the combined form of Split-Rocker is architectural and hollow.

Read more

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.

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.