Jeff Koons Retrospective
June 12, 2012

BASEL, SWITZERLAND— The Fondation Beyeler presents a fifty-work retrospective of Jeff Koons’s oeuvre that covers nearly thirty years of the artist’s career. The exhibition, open in Basel, Switzerland until September 2, will surely attract fairgoers from this week’s major event, Art Basel.

In collaboration with Koons, museum staff selected work from three distinct periods of the artist’s life. “The New,” representing Koons’s creations through the 1980s, captures the seductively clean aesthetic that characterized the ready-made combinations of his early career. Neat, factory-packaged carpet chemicals cheerfully assert their commercial appeal, encased in Plexiglass beside their cleaning complement, the Hoover vacuum. Further on, “Banality” reflects on Koon’s work from 1987—a critical year for the artist’s development. Here, sixteen sculptures join motifs from Renaissance, Baroque, pop and children’s art in provocative recombinations that challenge viewers’ assumptions about their own identity—even as they speak to viewers through their highly accessible content. The series includes Koons’s celebrated wood sculpture, Ushering in Banality. “Celebration,” which covers the artist’s most recent creations, presents popular favorites like Balloon Dog (1994) and Cracked Egg (1994-2006).

Of the entire exhibition, Koons has cryptically remarked: “The objects upstairs, my work, are empty. There’s no art in them, they’re transponders. The art is in the viewer.”

Image courtesy of Art Info