Jeff Koons
Ballon Monkey Blue
2017

Name: Ballon Monkey Blue
Brand: Jeff Koons
Price: 26478.77 USD
Availability: InStock

About the Item

Limited Edition of 999. Balloon Monkey (Blue), by Koons, is based on a balloon that is twisted into the shape of a monkey. Seven years in the making, the original Balloon Monkey, 2006–2013, is 12 ½ feet long and weighs nearly five tons. The monumental sculpture is made from mirror-polished stainless steel finished with transparent color coating in five unique versions: blue, magenta, orange, red and yellow. Jeff Koons has been interested in cultural subject matter with widespread appeal throughout his career. It is, therefore, fitting that the monkey has been a recurring motif in his body of work. Among the artist’s work, his most well-known is the life-sized porcelain artwork created in 1988, Michael Jackson and Bubbles. Humankind’s close kinship with primates has captured artist’s fascination throughout history, serving as an an allegorical figure for universal themes such as the pursuit of pleasure, sexuality and innocence. Balloon Monkey explores these themes, evident through the playful form juxtaposed with tumescent tail, undoubtedly a phallic reference. Koons merges these typically contradictory concepts through the reduction of the subject to its most essential form, thereby purifying otherwise conflicting sensations for the viewer to achieve the elevated state of transcendence through self-acceptance.

Creator:

Jeff Koons (1955, American)

Creation Year:

2017

Dimensions:

Height: 9.85 in (25 cm)Width: 8.27 in (21 cm)Depth: 15.36 in (39 cm)

Medium:

Porcelain

Movement & Style:

Contemporary

Period:

2010-

Condition:

Gallery Location:

Porto, PT

Reference Number:

1stDibs: LU2214212699952

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Jeff Koons

Jeff Koons was born in York, Pennsylvania, in 1955. He studied at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He received a BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art in 1976. Koons lives and works in New York City.

Since his first solo exhibition in 1980, Koons’s sculptures, prints and other works have been shown in major galleries and institutions throughout the world. His work was the subject of a major exhibition organized by the Whitney Museum of American Art, "Jeff Koons: A Retrospective" (June 27 – October 19, 2014), which traveled to the Centre Pompidou Paris (November 26, 2014 – April 27, 2015) and the Guggenheim Bilbao (June 9 – September 27, 2015).

Other exhibitions include “Appearance Stripped Bare: Desire and Object in the Work of Marcel Duchamp and Jeff Koons, Even”; “Jeff Koons at the Ashmolean”; and “Jeff Koons. Shine” at Palazzo Strozzi in Florence, Italy. “Jeff Koons: Lost in America” was on view at QM Gallery ALRIWAQ in Doha, Qatar from November 21, 2021 through March 31, 2022.

Koons is widely known for his iconic sculptures Rabbit and Balloon Dog as well as the monumental floral sculpture Puppy (1992), shown at Rockefeller Center and permanently installed at the Guggenheim Bilbao. Another floral sculpture, Split-Rocker (2000), previously installed at the Papal Palace in Avignon, Château de Versailles, and Fondation Beyeler in Basel, was most recently on view at Rockefeller Center in 2014.

Koons has received numerous awards and honors in recognition of his cultural achievements. Notably, the artist received the Governor’s Awards for the Arts “Distinguished Arts Award” from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts; President Jacques Chirac promoted Koons to Officier de la Legion d’Honneur; former United States Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton honored Koons with the State Department Medal of the Arts for his outstanding commitment to the Art in Embassies Program and international cultural exchange; and Consul General Ragini Gupta presented Koons the U.S. Consulate General’s Award for Cultural Diplomacy in Florence.

In 2017, Koons was made the first Artist-in-Residence at Columbia University’s Mortimer B. Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute and, also, made an Honorary Member of University of Oxford's Edgar Wind Society for Outstanding Contribution for Visual Culture. Koons has been a board member of the International Centre for Missing & Exploited Children (ICMEC) since 2002, and cofounded the Koons Family International Law and Policy Institute with ICMEC for the purpose of combating global issues of child abduction and exploitation and to protect the world’s children.

The authentic Jeff Koons art on 1stDibs includes sculptures, prints, mixed media and more.

(Biography provided by Galleri GKM Siwert Bergstrom)