About
When I was about five years old, I would go after school to this little building, like a little shelter. In the afternoons we’d make things out of Popsicle sticks. We’d work with Play-Doh. And this experience gave me my foundation. That’s what I hold on to in the world. And whatever I made at that time, I know is equivalent to what I’m doing now. And that was, for me, really art.
—Jeff Koons
Gagosian is pleased to present the exhibition of Cracked Egg (Blue) (1994–2006) by Jeff Koons, a large two-part stainless-steel sculpture from the mythic Celebration series that he began with Balloon Dog in 1994. Cracked Egg (Blue) is a unique work and the first of five versions (including the artist’s proof), each rendered in a different vivid color.
The Celebration series comprises twenty different sculptures and sixteen paintings inspired by Koons’s enduring preoccupation with childhood experiences and childlike consciousness. These paintings and sculptures isolate moments and objects associated with life’s celebratory events such as birthdays and holidays. With its impressive scale, pure lines, and flawless, highly reflective surface, Cracked Egg (Blue) resonates with iconic significance.
From the outset of his controversial career, Koons turned the traditional notion of the work of art and its context inside out. Focusing on some of the most unexpected objects as models for his work, from vacuum cleaners and inflatable flowers to novelty drink caddies, Koons eschewed typical standards of “good taste” in art, instead embracing conventional, distinctly American middle-class values to expose the vulnerabilities of hierarchies and value systems. Addressing various conceptual constructs including the new, the banal, and the heavenly, Koons has evolved his work from its literal, deadpan beginnings to baroque manifestations that oscillate between abstraction, sculpture, and pure spectacle.
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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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.