An exciting contemporary exhibition was held in Newport street gallery of a well-know artist called Jeff Koons. The gallery is owned and curated by Damien Hirst and it exhibited a variety of Jeff Koons’ art works, including sculpture, oil painting and photography.

 

The whole gallery has three floors including six main rooms that are large and white, also they were ranged within a line. Interestingly, you can see room 2 from the third floor corridor, which shows the artwork named balloon monkey. More importantly, the whole exhibition is organized chronological and thematically.

 

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. Since his first solo exhibition in 1980, Koons’ work has been shown in major galleries and institutions worldwide. A full survey of Koon’s career was the subject of a major exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, which travelled to Centre Pompidou in Paris and to the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao. Koons lives and works in New York City. (According to Newport

Street Gallery website: http://www.newportstreetgallery.com/exhibitions/current)

 

Jeff Koons is widely considered to be one of the most significant artists to have emerged in the postwar era. Since the late 1970s, his diverse work has explored themes pertaining to taste, consumerism, mass culture, beauty, acceptance and the role of the artist. Having once stated, ‘everything already exists in this world’, Koons has also reconfigured the concept of the readymade.

 

His artworks mixed children’s interests with the vulgar symbols, excitements and disgust. His artworks with bright color and the subject matter of balloon and toy. They illustrate and contains full of children’s interests. By contrast, there are some large size erotic photographs displayed in the gallery.

 

For example the artworks in room 3 are Bowl with Eggs and two large-size erotic photographs on the wall. The pink bowl with full of the white eggs inside, it is extremely bigger than normal size, the size is approximately 1702*3219*3219mm. All of them are made of polyethylene.

 

The color pallet of this artwork is very simple, limited and pure, Koons only used pink and white. However, I believe the use of pink here represents and illustrate a slight sensual feeling; especially there are two erotic pictures placed beside it. I am sure there are must be some connections between these works, such as the new life of sex. Koons’ aim was to remove the stigma of shame and guilt from sexuality. (According to the booklet of Newport Street Gallery)

 

Obviously, these artworks offer the audience a strong visual experience. I believe that the contrast between photographs and sculptures are successful. Because i think that if you take the photographs away, the sculpture will become meaningless and vice versa by itself. I cannot imagine that there are only those erotic photographs in the gallery; it might be a little disgust to the viewers. However, from the biology aspect, the sexuality of human nature and it produce new life. So I think this is why he uses the eggs to compare with the photograph.

 

Another example is the oil painting named Girl with Dolphin and Monkey. The main subject matter in this painting is a girl who is wearing lingerie and riding a balloon dolphin while she is catching a balloon monkey and trying to kiss it.

 

This painting illustrates full of salacity and sexuality hint. Because the girl teased the balloon monkey with her charms, obviously, her gesture is sexy. In fact, she is not only teased the balloon monkey but also teased the viewers successfully. But the balloon toys help us to evocative of childhood, which is the innocent and beautiful time.

 

Peter Schjeldahl quite superbly formulated the dilemma that Koons’s work presents in a review published in the 14 December 1988 issue of 7 days: “ Jeff Koons makes me sick. He may be the definitive artist of this moment, and that makes me the sickest. I am interested in my response, which includes excitement and helpless pleasure along with alienation and disgust…. I love it, and pardon me while I throw up.”(According to Jeff Koons published by San Francisco Museum Of Modern Art 1992)

 

He uses recyclable material to create his artworks. The majority of his artworks were balloon toys, but in fact, these works made by stainless steel or aluminum with special paint on the surface.

 

For example, the Play-Doh in gallery 6. It faithfully reproduces in mountainous size, a small lump of modeling clay fashioned by his young son. The twenty-seven individual pieces are cast in aluminum and held together simply by their own weight. (According to the booklet by Newport Street Gallery)

 

The sculpture is colorful and placed in a thin white square, which placed in the entrance of the gallery. Despite it is a cohesive whole; it is clearly separated to different individual fragments by its color and shape. It is similar to our social relationship. Although we live in a society and have complex social relationship, every one of us is still an individual. Importantly, it is successfully fool our eyes. Many people were shocked when they find out it is made of aluminum.

 

Sometimes, his artworks remind me of Duchamp’s works. But the differences between Koons’ practices and Duchamp’s are readily apparent. Duchamp tended to use ordinary, everyday objects, and the similarities are they both were predominantly to their functions in the world outside the purview of art. Koons, by contrast, to some degree reflect the differences between Duchamp’s world and our world, his use of objects that are already a little closer to art, or at least to design, and that are defined not so much by their function as by the audience and the market.

 

Overall, Jeff Koons is a successful and well-respected artist in the industry. The reason is that most of his works aroused the society and individuals’ interests and attentions. He is also a successful businessman along with his artist career, due to the expensive price of his artworks. From my point of view, the success of Koons, to some stage, influenced and reflected the extravagant living style of people from upper class.