ART-PRESENTATION: Jeff Koons

Mirrors from the very beginning have played an essential role in almost all of Jeff Koons’s work. They appear in the first “Inflatables” of 1979, in which glass flowers and other objects picked up in discount stores were placed on mirrored platforms and backdrops. Since, many of his most ambitious works, such as the “Balloon Swan”, “Balloon Monkey” and “Balloon Rabbit”, are finished with such shine that the viewer cannot but be aware of themselves many, many times as he circles the sculptures.

By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Almine Rech Gallery Archive

An exhibition with works by Jeff Koons inaugurates the new space in London of Almine Rech Gallery, including two of his controversial “Gazing Ball” paintings, replicas of masterpieces with a blue orb placed in front of each of them, as well as a pair of “Ballerina” sculptures. Since his emergence in the ‘80s, Jeff Koons has blended the concerns and methods of Pop, Conceptual, and the readymade with craft-making and popular culture to create his own unique iconography, often controversial and always engaging. His work explores contemporary obsessions with sex and desire, race and gender, celebrity, media, commerce, and fame. These themes are fused through the iconography and materials used in his creations, whose painstaking finishes are achieved with the help of his studio and skilled fabricators, an invaluable tool for the artist. In the “Gazing Ball” series, the artist is in dialogue with artists of the past, such as Titian, El Greco, Courbet, and Manet, among others. The works deal with the power of artistic gesture. Each work has a blue glass gazing ball that sits on a painted aluminum shelf attached to the front of the painting. The viewer and the painting are reflected in the gazing ball. This metaphysical occurrence connects the viewer to a family of cultural history in real time. Through the simple act of placing a gazing ball in front of the images, painting and sculpture are reunited for maximum sensory perception, as in ancient times. “Seated Ballerina” (2010-15) is a larger-than-life sculpture by Jeff Koons. Koons, long known for works that reinvent readymade sources, took inspiration from a small porcelain ballerina figurine utilizing cutting edge technology. The work is one of Koons’s latest sculpture in his “Antiquity” series, begun in 2008. The series explores themes such as beauty, fertility, love, and the connectivity in the artistic dialogue that spans the history of man. Jeff Koons observes: “Ballerina is like a Venus. You could be looking at a Venus of Willendorf or some of the oldest Venuses. It is really about beauty and even a sense of contemplation, a sense of ease”.

Info: Almine Rech Gallery, 11 Savile Row, 1st Floor, Mayfair, London, Duration: 4/10/16-21/1/17, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 10:00-18:00, www.alminerech.com