My art and my life are totally one. I have everything at my disposal and I’m doing what I want to do.I have my platform, I have the attention. This is the time for Jeff Koons
American artist Jeff Koons is widely regarded for his bold paintings and monumental sculptures that hold a mirror up to contemporary culture.
Using the photorealistic and commercial aesthetic familiar from an earlier generation of Pop artists, Koons has generated his own universally recognizable style that frequently comprises smooth, highly reflective surfaces and bright, saturated colors.
Koons typically works in series, tapping into subject matter from popular culture and art history that is frequently reminiscent of childhood in order to, as he notes, empower the viewer towards achieving a state of personal transcendence.
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Born in 1955 in York, Pennsylvania, Koons studied at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He received his B.F.A. from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 1976.
Koons began working with David Zwirner in 2012. His inaugural exhibition at the gallery in New York debuted a new series of sculptures, titled Gazing Ball, in 2013.
The artist’s first solo exhibition took place in 1980 at the New Museum in New York. In 1988, his first American survey was held at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago.
Work by the artist is held in public collections including The Broad, Los Angeles; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Tate Gallery, London; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York.
As a young man, Koons revered the work of Spanish artist Salvador Dalí to such an extent that he jumpedon a bus for New York, aged 17, when he learned the Surrealist master was staying at the city’s St. Regis Hotel. Dalí not only agreed to meet Koons but even took him to see a new exhibition of his work at an uptown gallery.
On moving to New York, Koons took a job at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), working on the membership desk. He attracted attention by wearing polka-dot shirts, big bow ties and, occasionally, an inflatable plastic flower. According to Koons, MoMA membership doubled during his time there.
Perhaps Koons's best-known sculptures are those that were inspired by balloon animals – and produced in mirror-polished, stainless steel. In 2008, a huge “balloon dog” –in resplendent magenta colour – was installed in the Salon d’Hercule, as part of a Koons exhibition at the Palace of Versailles.
His sculptures are regularly displayed in public spaces – on three separate occasions outsideNew York’s Rockefeller Center alone. His most recent piece here was Seated Ballerina in 2017, depicting a dancer in a blue tutu adjusting one of her shoes. The work was 45 feet high.
In 2013, he was invited by Lady Gaga to design the cover for her third studio album, Artpop
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