David Zwirner is pleased to present Gazing Ball, the world debut of a new series of sculptures in the gallery’s West 19th Street spaces. Read the cover story in this week’s New York Magazine.
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. His 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.
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.
A major retrospective of the artist’s work, curated by Scott Rothkopf, will be opening in 2014. The venues include the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, and the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris.
Koons had his first solo exhibition 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. From 1992 to 1993, an international retrospective toured between the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, Germany; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; and the Aarhus Kunstmuseum, Denmark.
Solo exhibitions from the past decade include those organized by the Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Naples, 2003; Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art, Oslo, 2004 (traveled to the Helsinki City Art Museum, 2005); Château de Versailles, France, 2008; Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, 2008; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 2008; Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin, 2008; Serpentine Gallery, London, 2009; Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh, 2011; Fondation Beyeler, Basel, 2012; and the Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt and Liebieghaus Skulpturensammlung, Frankfurt, a joint exhibition in 2012.
Work by the artist is held in numerous public collections, including The Broad Art Foundation, Santa Monica, California; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C.; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.; 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. He lives and works in New York.