JEFF KOONS
In the summer of 2012, the SCHIRN and the Liebieghaus Skulpturensammlung turn their attention to the work of American artist Jeff Koons (born in 1955), an artist who has been setting trends in the art world since the 1980s. The two simultaneous exhibitions dedicated to Koons’s oeuvre deliberately separate his sculpture and painting, presenting each in its own context. The SCHIRN presentation JEFF KOONS. THE PAINTER will focus on Koons’s structural development as a painter. In his monumental paintings—whose motifs draw upon the most varied sources of high and popular culture—both hyperrealistic and gestural features give rise to highly complex concentrations of image and content. By contrast, in the exhibition JEFF KOONS. THE SCULPTOR at the Liebieghaus, both world-renowned and new sculptural works by Koons will enter into a dialogue with the historic building and its collection spanning 5,000 years of sculpture.
PUBLICATIONS
Loud, fanciful, without respect - the provocative art of Jeff Koons (*1955) leaves no one cold. Koons is skilled at manipulating the media, exploding the boundaries of all genres with his appropriations from Pop Art and popular culture, and playing the keyboard of the art market like no other. Collectors scramble for his large paintings and colossal, stainless steel balloon animals. Yet, in his eye-poppingly colorful, immaculately perfect works Koons also exposes the seductive potential of the glittering world of commodities; his art works are amusing and thought-provoking at the same time. The American artist's once controversial work has now been recognized for its prescience.
This publication presents his oeuvre in two volumes: Koons' paintings from all of the artist's creative phases form the core of the first volume. His sculptures are the focal point of the second volume, in which objects from the Liebieghaus collection, stemming from five thousand years of cultural history, are set in a dialogue with his works.
Edited by Matthias Ulrich, Vinzenz Brinkmann, Joachim Pissarro and Max Hollein. With prefaces by Max Hollein and texts by Babette Babich, Andreas Beyer, Vincenz Brinkmann, Jeffrey Fraiman, Walter Grasskamp, Joachim Pissarro, Scott Rothkopf, Matthias Ulrich, Monika Wagner an interview by Isabelle Graw with the artist.