This book is published in conjunction with the presentation of Jeff Koons’s new works Standing Woman and Demeter at Art Basel, from June 16th to June 21st, 2015.
'The gazing balls that animate Jeff Koons’s most recent works abound with layers of associations and meanings–historical, mythological, sexual, personal, universal–but, above all, they offer us a way to confront what we might call Jeff Koons’s own artistic DNA: these works embody where Koons ‘comes from’ and where he is heading. Like Janus, (whom, incidentally, the artist had once thought would offer a good theme for one of his sculptures), Koons’s gaze appears to focus both on the past and the future. Koons’s special artistic origin–his specific, charged, and highly personal genealogy–includes and involves Picasso, through and through; the show of these two latest works by Jeff Koons, which culminate his last series Gazing Balls, are offered to our gaze, today, by Almine Rech in Basel; they establish Koons in the same artistic family tree as Pablo Picasso, who also was as eagerly stimulated by looking at the art of the past as he was by looking at art of the present. Koons could here be described as the spiritual heir–or, as the mythological and artistic scion of Picasso: both artists, like Janus, share the capacity of looking in both directions.'
64 pages
19.9 x 27.5 cm, 7.5 x 10.6 inches
Hardcover
English / French
Edition of 1000
Almine Rech Gallery Editions