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Deodato Arte Gallery is pleased to announce the exhibition “Jeff Koons: Reflections”, which will take place in our Pietrasanta gallery from December 4, 2021 to January 1, 2022. The opening will take place on Saturday 4 December 2021 at 5.30 p.m. in Via Garibaldi 22, Pietrasanta. Admission is free and Green Pass certification is required. To attend the opening event, click here and follow the instructions.
Eccentric and provocative, Jeff Koons draws inspiration from consumer objects and reinterprets them in a kitschy way, merging them with classicist icons. With the 1986 Rabbit, a stainless-steel sculpture, Koons has become the world's most paid living artist and his works are increasingly searched by the collectors.
Balloon Animal, Gazing Ball e Antiquity
The works by the world's highest-paid artist, among the most beloved of our time, will be exhibited to the public in an exclusive selection of Koons' most iconic series, from Balloon Animals to Gazing Ball and Antiquity.
The Balloon Animals represent the artist's most emblematic series. They were first created in the 1980s, when Koons decided to transform a consumer object, such as a balloon shaped like an animal, into a stainless-steel sculpture. The playful taste reminds us of childhood birthday parties, while the apparent lightness contrasts with the real weight (and economic value) of the original steel sculptures, all in the artist's typical kitsch aesthetic. At the Deodato Arte gallery, the original limited edition porcelain Balloon Animals will be on display, including all the most famous subjects.
Gazing Ball and Antiquity were created later in the artist's career and they reveal a new and unexpected dialogue between the classical and contemporary worlds.
In 2013 Koons unveiled a series of white plaster sculptures, inspired by Greco-Roman subjects and everyday objects, to which he added a reflective sphere, creating the Gazing Ball series. In later years, Koons did the same with reproductions of masterpieces of art history, placing the sphere in the centre. The blue reflective sphere, changing the perception of the work, gives a sense of fragility to the viewer, who, reflected in it, can look at himself, becoming part of the work itself.
The limited editions offered exclusively in Italy by Deodato Arte gallery are screenprints on paper of different sizes and subjects, where a circular blue reflective surface is placed in the centre like a ball, allowing the viewer to see himself reflected in the work.
Among the paintings reproduced by Koons are some of the most iconic masterpieces in the history of art, such as Lunch on the Grass and Olympia by Manet and Madonna and Child with Four Saints by Perugino.
Jeff Koons - Gazing Ball (Perugino) - 2017
Jeff Koons - Antiquity 3 - 2019
Antiquity, was initially conceived as a series of paintings with different levels of imagery depicting prehistoric and Greco-Roman sculptures, as well as more contemporary subjects with realistic photographs of female beauty, such as the actress Gretchen Mol pretending to be the famous pin-up Bettie Page. In this series, Koons links his works to masterpieces of art history, creating an evocative dialogue between seemingly distant images, including classical subjects, consumerist objects and mass media icons. Like Gazing Ball, the Antiquity limited edition series gathers screenprints on paper, which recall Jeff Koons' previous paintings, perfectly reproducing the details and intense, brilliant colouring that characterise the original work.
