Jeff Koons, "Balloon Dog (Blue)", 2021

Jeff Koons
Balloon Dog (Blue)
2021

Limoges porcelain with chromatic coating
Edition of 799
40 × 48 × 15.8 cm
(15.75 × 18.90 × 6.22 in)
Signed and numbered

In mint condition

In the original box designed by Jeff Koons, accompanied by a Certificate of Authenticity.

The piece was purchased directly from the producer and is securely stored at our premises.

One of the most iconic works of the 21st century. The magic attraction of Balloon Dog lies in its ability to convey cuteness, power and material perfection. Its alert, four-legged form makes it reminiscent of the heroic equestrian statuary that populates public spaces across the globe. Koons himself has called this piece the ”Trojan horse“ of the Celebration series.

This work of art has chameleon-like qualities; its reflective surface is capable of physically changing with its surroundings and its many-layered meanings make it conceptually change in the mind of each viewer.

The freestanding limited edition of the ”Balloon Dog (Blue)” requires 60 people for the production of each work and it takes a full month to complete one. Its creation combines traditional porcelain decoration techniques with new technologies which are not typically applied to ceramics, this combination allows to achieve the metallic and reflective characteristics. Each edition is signed on the inside front right leg and the signature is applied on top on the porcelain and fired in the oven.

”It’s a very optimistic piece, it’s a balloon that a clown would maybe twist for you at a birthday party. But at the same time it’s a Trojan horse. There are other things here that are inside, maybe the sexuality of the piece.” —Jeff Koons

JEFF KOONS

Jeff Koons (born 1955) playfully tests the boundaries of commerce, celebrity, banality and pleasure, turning banal commercial or everyday objects into art icons by using seductive materials, a shift of scale and a contextual displacement.

He rose to prominence in the mid-1980s as part of a generation of artists who explored the meaning of art in a media-saturated era. Koons turns banal commercial or everyday objects into art icons by using seductive materials, a shift of scale, and a contextual displacement. Jeff Koons’s “Balloon Dog” (featuring his enormous iconic chromium stainless steel dogs); his large-scale vinyl “Inflatables”; or the giant “Split-Rocker” all follow this principle. For instance, Jeff Koons in “Puppy” engaged the past and the present, referencing the eighteenth-century formal garden, while adding the most sugary of iconography.

“It’s basically the medium that defines people’s perceptions of the world, of life itself, how to interact with others. The media defines reality.” —Jeff Koons

Originally licensed as a commodities broker, Koons decided to become an artist in the late 1970s and moved from Wall Street into a factory-like studio in SoHo with hundreds of assistants. Since then, he has produced different iconic series, like the “Pre-New”, a series of domestic objects in strange new configurations, and “The Equilibrium” series, consisting of basketballs floating in distilled water tanks. The “Banality” series, which includes Jeff Koons´s “Michael Jackson and Bubbles” and “Woman in Tub”, among others, is characterized by oddly eroticized, comic, and kitsch images. However, it is indeed Koons’s “Made in Heaven” series that is his most provocative and controversial work, in which he examines the place of sexuality in visual culture.
Koons is widely regarded as one of the most important, influential, and controversial contemporary artists. He constantly tests the boundaries between art and commerce, high culture and mass culture, ready-made and art objects, by decontextualizing his objects and lifting them to iconic status.
Jeff Koons´s art is the result of his intention to bring it out of the enclave of the genius-driven artist into the realms of contemporary pop and commerce-driven culture.