Koons, Jeff
Koons’ works engage, with a high degree of irony the class structure. His work refers to the moneyed classes perpetuate that type of beauty that in certain cases might even be seen as anti-aesthetic. At times, Jeff Koons has been labeled a cynic; he himself recognizes and knows that any publicity is good publicity, so instead of raising his voice, he uses proven business techniques and the images that marketing offers to communicate face to face with the masses.
The artist started to gain notoriety with his illuminated vacuum cleaners inside glass cases, and thanks to them he coined the term Commodity Sculpture. Since the initial stages of his career, Koons worked as a speculator, assuming economic losses when producing his sculptures and risking future solvency on the strength of his proposal.
The stages of his creative process are precisely framed as a marketing campaign, as one can see from his titles: Equilibrium (1985), Luxury and Degradation (1986), Statuary (1986), Banality (1988), Made in Heaven (1991) or Easyfun Ethereal (2000).
For the realization of the series Total Equilibrium (1985), months of chemical investigation were spent to reach the perfect balance between the elements that compose it. In a purely sculptural exercise, inside a water tank perfectly aligned with the ground—filled with a formula of sodium chloride and distilled water—basketballs float inside, some with half their circumference submerged, others completely immersed in the exact center of the tank.
In Three Ball Total Equilibrium Tank (Two Spalding Shaq Attaq, One Spalding NBA Tip-Off) (1986) one can sense a lightness of touch in the hyper-real degree of perfection in the execution. As if he were a stockbroker, Koons bets it all and.
― Javier Toscano