JEFF KOONS
Skarstedt is pelased to present the American artist Jeff Koons in their gallery in London. The exhibition features work from his Easyfun-Ethereal series first commissioned by the Deutsche Guggenheim Berlin in 2000, alongside artworks from the Popeye and Antiquity series.
March 1 – May 26, 2024
At once alluring and chaotic, Koons’s Easyfun-Ethereal series is renowned for its combination of iconography from mass media and childhood nostalgia, interlaced with faint echoes from art history to exude energy and joy. Its genesis stemmed from the enthusiastic public response to the ultra-reflective sculpture Balloon Flower (Blue) (1995-2000) installed in Potsdamer Platz at the turn of the century, prompting the Deutsche Guggenheim to commission seven canvases for a landmark exhibition in 2000.
Unlike the Easyfun series (1999-2000) which exclusively draws from pure, childlike imagery, this body of work features a more adult lexicon as exemplified by the seductive bikini bottoms overlaying an inflatable cartoon dog in Hot Dog (2002). Pancakes (2001), on the other hand, offers a sensory overload, where pancakes and peas invoke senses of smell and taste, the hands of touch, and the landscape of sights and sound.
The exhibition explores the different routes followed by artists who have given free rein to their imagination in recent years—in painting as well as in film and spatial installations. The result is a staging of the concentrated power of the imagination that touches on and thinks the impossible, securing substantial spaces of freedom for art in which subjective and artistic, serious and ironic, as well as social and political issues are addressed.
While influenced by Pop Art, Minimalism and Hyperrealism, Koons also holds a profound respect for ancient Greek and Roman sculptures, which the Antiquity series focuses on. Drawing on themes of fertility, love and beauty in Antiquity 1 (Grass) (2009–2011), Koons converts the Hellenistic sculpture group from 100 BC of Aphrodite with Pan and Eros into the central motif of the painting. The commanding canvas of over two and a half metres pulsates with a complex layering of image and sculptural reference.
Entwining hues of forest greens tinged slightly brown, akin to a seventeenth-century landscape painting that has aged with the annals of time, Koons overlays the statue of Silenus (540–530 BC), a satyr from Greek mythology transporting the viewer to an imagined antiquity. The series underlines the crucial place that beauty and desire have in art, although, Koons also understands classical sculpture to embody aspirational values, enabling us to unlock our full potential as individuals and as a wider society.
With a career spanning over four decades, Koons’s preoccupation with the lavish elements of visual culture is a hallmark of his oeuvre. From his paintings to sculpture and everything in between, pleasure for Koons has always been paramount. As he noted in 2002, ‘You know, all of life is… just about being able to find amazement in things.’1 The five monumental canvases on display in this exhibition explore the core components of his painterly practice whilst navigating art history, his personal history and shared histories.