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Lot Essay
One of the most prominent artists working today, Jeff Koons is well known for his bold paintings and sculptures. Typically working in series, his art holds up a mirror to contemporary consumer culture, using the photorealistic, commercial aesthetic familiar from an earlier generation of Pop artists to generate his own unique and universally recognizable style.
Koons' subjects range from toys to inflatables to household items to luxury goods and sexualized imagery. His references to popular media are evidenced not merely in his choice of subject matter but also in his visual techniques: his sculptures often involve smooth, glistening surfaces while his paintings employ bright and
saturated colors. The former, in particular, are often created on an enormous scale and comprise gigantic mirror polished stainless steel balloon figures and a towering topiary puppy. Yet while such works may appear to beam of optimism and exuberance they are often laced with more somber undertones. The pristine appearance of Koons' life-sized porcelain sculpture of Michael Jackson with his pet chimpanzee, Bubbles, for example, seems at once to immortalize the late singer's celebrity while simultaneously revealing the pop star's isolation and loneliness.
Bikini (Desert) (2001-2011) forms part of Koons' Easyfun - Ethereal series, which he began in the early 2000s. It consists of a silhouette of a bikini bottom made of stainless steel and mounted at an inch and a half's distance from a wall. An image depicting two different landscapes has been silkscreened onto its surface, showing a lush waterfall scene on its left side and a dry desert towards the right.
1 Jeff Koons, cited in Jeff Koons (London: Phaidon Press, 2009), p. 462.
Koons' subjects range from toys to inflatables to household items to luxury goods and sexualized imagery. His references to popular media are evidenced not merely in his choice of subject matter but also in his visual techniques: his sculptures often involve smooth, glistening surfaces while his paintings employ bright and
saturated colors. The former, in particular, are often created on an enormous scale and comprise gigantic mirror polished stainless steel balloon figures and a towering topiary puppy. Yet while such works may appear to beam of optimism and exuberance they are often laced with more somber undertones. The pristine appearance of Koons' life-sized porcelain sculpture of Michael Jackson with his pet chimpanzee, Bubbles, for example, seems at once to immortalize the late singer's celebrity while simultaneously revealing the pop star's isolation and loneliness.
Bikini (Desert) (2001-2011) forms part of Koons' Easyfun - Ethereal series, which he began in the early 2000s. It consists of a silhouette of a bikini bottom made of stainless steel and mounted at an inch and a half's distance from a wall. An image depicting two different landscapes has been silkscreened onto its surface, showing a lush waterfall scene on its left side and a dry desert towards the right.